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THE  MARGINAL  NOTES 
OF    LORD   MACAU LA\i 


SELECTED  BY 

SIR  G.  O.  TREVELYAN 


IJalifornia 

jgional 

cility 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


MARGINAL    NOTES    BY 
LORD  MACAULAY 


MARGINAL    NOTES 

BY 

LORD    MACAULAY 


SELECTED  AND  ARRANGED  BY 

SIR   GEORGE    OTTO    TREVELYAN 

AUTHOR  OF 
"  THE  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  LORD  MACAULAY  " 


*  ,,        •»  -v  €■ 


LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND  CO. 

91  AND  93  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1907 


COPTRIOHT   1907  BY 
LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND  CO. 


ALL  BIQBTS  BESERTED 


M3^ 


MARGINAL  NOTES  BY 
LORD  MACAULAY 

Macaulay's   library  contained   many  books,   of  no 
great  intrinsic  value  in  themselves,  which  are  read- 
able, from  the  first  page  to  the  last,  for  the  sake  of  his 
manuscript    notes    inscribed    in    immense    profusion 
down  their  margins.    He  was   contented,  when   the 
humour  took  him,  to  amuse  his  solitary  hours  with 
N       such   productions   as   Percival   Stockdale's   memoirs, 
S      and  the  six  volumes  of  Miss  Anna  Seward's  Letters. 
His  running  commentary  on  those  trivial  and  preten- 
p      tious  authors  was  as  the  breaking  of  a  butterfly  be- 
I     neath  the  impact  of  a  cheerful  steam-hammer.     "In- 
genious," (so  Miss  Seward  wrote  to  a  correspondent,) 
"is  your  parallel  between  the  elder  and  the  modern 
^     Erasmus."     "The  modern  Erasmus,"  said  Macaulay, 
g     "is  Darwin.    That  anybody  should  have  thought  of 
C    making  a  parallel  between  him  and  the  elder  Erasmus 
is  odd  indeed.    They  had  nothing  but  the  name  in 
common.    One  might  as  well  make  a  parallel  between 
Caesar  and  Sir  Caesar  Hawkins."    "The  chief  amuse- 
ment," wrote  Miss  Seward,  "that  the  Inferno  gives 

432813    * 


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6         THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

me  is  from  tracing  the  plagiarisms  which  have  been 
made  from  it  by  more  interesting  and  pleasing  bards 
than  Dante ;  since  there  is  little  for  the  heart,  or  even 
for  the  curiosity  as  to  story,  in  this  poem.  Then  the 
plan  is  most  clumsily  arranged: — Virgil,  and  the  three 
talking  quadrupeds,  as  guides!  An  odd  association!" 
"What  can  she  mean?"  said  Macaulay.  "She  must 
allude  to  the  panther,  the  lion,  and  the  she-wolf  in  the 
First  Canto.  But  they  are  not  guides;  and  they  do 
not  talk." 

The  lady,  who  claimed  rank  as  a  Lyric  poet,  had 
pubHshed  what  she  called  a  paraphrase  of  Horace's 
Odes  without  knowing  a  word  of  Horace's  native 
language.  Her  version,  which  is  inconceivably  bad, 
was  based  upon  an  English  translation  by  the  Rev- 
erend Philip  Francis;  and  from  that  time  forward  she 
always  considered  herself  entitled  to  lay  down  the 
law  on  classical  questions.  "Pleasant  Mrs.  Piozzi," 
she  said,  "is  somewhat  ignorant  upon  poetic  subjects. 
She  speaks  of  ode-writing  as  an  inferior  species  of 
composition,  which  can  place  no  man  on  a  level  with 
the  epic,  the  dramatic,  or  the  didactic  bard.  Now 
the  rank  of  the  lyric  poet,  as  settled  by  the  ancients, 
succeeds  immediately  to  that  of  the  epic.  She  ought 
to  know  that  the  Latins  place  their  lyric  Horace  next 


LORD  MACAULAY  7 

to  their  epic  Virgil,  much  more  on  account  of  his  odes 
than  of  his  satires."  "What  Latins?"  asked  Ma- 
caulay.  "There  is  not  a  word  of  the  sort  in  any 
Latin  writer."  Macaulay,  who  was  a  purist  in  spell- 
ing, took  exception  to  Miss  Seward  calling  a  speech  a 
"Phillipic,"  and  seldom  speaking  of  a  pretty  girl 
except  as  a  "Syren;"  and  he  was  always  greatly  puz- 
zled by  the  references  in  her  letters  to  her  collection 
of  "centennial"  sonnets.  At  length  he  caught  her 
meaning.  "Now  I  understand.  She  calls  her  son- 
nets 'centennial'  because  there  were  a  hundred  of 
them.  Was  ever  such  pedantry  found  in  company 
with  such  ignorance?" 

It  was  worse  with  French  than  with  Greek  and 
Latin;  and  worst  of  all  with  English.  "My  convic- 
tion was  perfect,"  (Miss  Seward  wrote  to  a  lady  friend,) 
"that  you  would  all  four  be  delightful  acquisitions  to 
each  other.  I  might  travel  far  ere  I  should  find  so 
interesting  a  parte  quarre.^^  "  What  language  is  that  ? " 
said  Macaulay.  He  was  soon  to  know.  A  year  later 
Miss  Seward  received  from  her  friend  what  she  praises 
as  a  graceful  and  sparkling  epistle.  "It  speaks  of  a 
plan  in  agitation  to  visit  me,  accompanied  by  Helen 
Williams,  the  poetic;  Albinia  Mathias,  the  musical; 
and  Miss  MayHn,  the  beauteous."     "So  this,"  ex- 


8         THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

claimed  Macaulay,  "is  the  parte  quarre.     She  did  not 
know  that  a  partie  carree  means  a  party  of  two  gentle- 
men and  two  ladies,"    Macaulay  was  at  some  pains 
to  correct  Miss  Seward's  grammar.     "Come,  my  dear 
Lady,  let  you  and  I  attend  these  gentlemen  in  the 
study!"    That  was   Miss   Seward's   report   of   Doc- 
tor   Johnson's  words.     "Nay:"  observed  Macaulay; 
"Johnson  said  me,  I  will  be  sworn."     Miss  Seward 
characterised  some  sonnets,  in  the  style  of  Petrarch, 
as  "Avignon  Httle  gems."     "Little  Avignon  gems,  if 
you  please.  Miss  Seward!"  is  the  comment  in  the  mar- 
gin.    "So  the  brilliant  Sophia,"  remarked  the  lady, 
"has  commenced   Babylonian!"     "That  is  to  say," 
explained  Macaulay,  "she  has  taken  a  house  in  town." 
"Taste,"  said  Miss  Seward  on  one  occasion,  "is  ex- 
tremely various.    Where  good  sense,  metaphoric  con- 
sistency, or  the  rules  of  grammar  are  accused  of  hav- 
ing suffered  violation,  the  cause  may  not  be  tried  at 
her  arbitrary  tribunal."     "A  most  striking  instance," 
wrote  Macaulay,  "of  metaphoric  inconsistency.    You 
may  accuse  a  bad  writer  of  violating  good  sense  and 
grammar;  but  who  can  accuse  good  sense  and  gram- 
mar of  having  suffered  violation?"  ^ 

*  Macaulay  was  never  implacable  when  a  woman  was  concerned, — even 
a  woman  who  could  describe  a  country-house  as  an  "Edenic  villa  in  a 
bloomy  garden."     Miss  Seward,  after  her  father's  death,  gave  a  friend  an 


LORD  MACAULAY  9 

That  will  serve  for  a  specimen  of  the  manner  in 
which  Macaulay  diverted  himself  with  the  follies  of  a 
silly  author.  A  good  book  was  very  differently  han- 
dled. It  is  a  rare  privilege  to  journey  in  his  track 
through  the  higher  regions  of  literature.  His  favour- 
ite volumes  are  illustrated  and  enlivened  by  innumer- 
able entries,  of  which  none  are  prolix,  pointless,  or 
dull;  while  interest  and  admiration  are  expressed  by 
lines  drawn  down  the  sides  of  the  text, — and  even  by 
double  lines,  for  whole  pages  together,  in  the  case 
of  Shakspeare  and  Aristophanes,  Demosthenes  and 
Plato,  Paul  Louis  Courier  and  Jonathan  Swift.  His 
standard  of  excellence  was  always  at  the  same  level, 
his  mind  always  on  the  alert,  and  his  sense  of  enjoy- 
ment always  keen.  Frederic  Myers,  himself  a  fine 
scholar  and  an  eager  student,  once  said  to  me:  "He 
seems  habitually  to  have  read  as  I  read  only  during 
my  first  half-hour  with  a  great  author."  Macaulay 
began  with  the  frontispiece,  if  the  book  possessed  one. 
"Said  to  be  very  like,  and  certainly  full  of  the  charac- 
ter.   Energy,    acuteness,    tyranny,    and    audacity   in 

account  of  his  long  illness.  "The  pleasure  he  took  in  my  attendance  and 
caresses  survived  till  within  the  last  three  months.  His  reply  to  my  in- 
quiries after  his  health  was  always  'Pretty  well,  my  darling;'  and, — when 
I  gave  him  his  food  and  his  wine, — 'That's  my  darling!'  with  a  smile  of 
comfort  and  delight  inexpressibly  dear  to  my  heart.  I  often  used  to  ask 
him  if  he  loved  me.  His  almost  constant  answer  was,  'Do  I  love  my  own 
eyes?'  "  "Why,"  (asked  Macaulay,)  "could  she  not  always  write  thus?" 


lo       THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

every  line  of  the  face."  Those  words  are  written 
above  the  portrait  of  Richard  Bentley,  in  Bishop 
Monk's  biography  of  that  famous  writer.  The  blank 
spaces  are  frequently  covered  with  little  spurts  of  criti- 
cism, and  outbursts  of  warm  appreciation.  "This  is 
a  very  good  Idyll.  Indeed  it  is  more  pleasing  to  me 
than  almost  any  other  pastoral  poem  in  any  language. 
It  was  my  favourite  at  College.  There  is  a  rich  pro- 
fusion of  rustic  imagery  about  it  which  I  find  nowhere 
else.  It  opens  a  scene  of  rural  plenty  and  comfort 
which  quite  fills  the  imagination, — flowers,  fruits, 
leaves,  fountains,  soft  goatskins,  old  wine,  singing 
birds,  joyous  friendly  companions.  The  whole  has 
an  air  of  reality  which  is  more  interesting  than  the 
conventional  world  which  Virgil  has  placed  in  Arca- 
dia." So  Macaulay  characterises  the  Seventh  Idyll  of 
Theocritus.  Of  Ben  Jonson's  Alchemist  he  writes: 
*Tt  is  very  happily  managed  indeed  to  make  Subtle 
use  so  many  terms  of  alchemy,  and  talk  with  such 
fanatical  warmth  about  his  'great  art,'  even  to  his 
accomplice.  As  Hume  says,  roguery  and  enthusiasm 
run  into  each  other.  I  admire  this  play  very  much. 
The  plot  would  have  been  more  agreeable,  and  more 
rational,  if  Surly  had  married  the  widow  whose  honour 
he   has   preserved.    Lovewit   is   as   contemptible   as 


LORD  MACAULAY  ii 

Subtle  himself.  The  whole  of  the  trick  about  the 
Queen  of  Fairy  is  improbable  in  the  highest  degree. 
But,  after  all,  the  play  is  as  good  as  any  in  our  lan- 
guage out  of  Shakspeare."  Ben  Jonson,  in  the  pref- 
ace to  his  [Catiline,  appeals  from  "the  reader  in  or- 
dinary" to  "the  reader  extraordinary"  against  the 
charge  of  having  borrowed  too  largely  and  undis- 
guisedly  from  Cicero's  speeches.  "I,"  said  Macaulay, 
"am  a  reader  in  ordinary,  and  I  cannot  defend  the 
introduction  of  the  First  Catilinarian  oration,  at  full 
length,  into  a  play.  Catiline  is  a  very  middling  play. 
The  characters  are  certainly  discriminated,  but  with 
no  delicacy.  Jonson  makes  Cethegus  a  mere  vulgar 
ruffian.  He  quite  forgets  that  all  the  conspira- 
tors were  gentlemen,  noblemen,  pohticians,  probably 
scholars.  He  has  seized  only  the  coarsest  peculiar- 
ities of  character.  As  to  the  conduct  of  the  piece, 
nothing  can  be  worse  than  the  long  debates  and  narra- 
tives which  make  up  half  of  it." 

Of  Pope's  Rape  of  the  Lock,  Macaulay  says: 
"Admirable  indeed!  The  fight  towards  the  begin- 
ning of  the  last  book  is  very  extravagant  and  foohsh. 
It  is  the  blemish  of  a  poem  which,  but  for  this  blemish, 
would  be  as  near  perfection  in  its  own  class  as  any 
work  in  the  world."    He  thus  remarks  on  the  Imita- 


12       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

tions  of  Horace's  Satires:  "Horace  had  perhaps  less 
wit  than  Pope,  but  far  more  humour,  far  more  variety, 
more  sentiment,  more  thought.  But  that  to  which 
Horace  chiefly  owes  his  reputation,  is  his  perfect  good 
sense  and  self-knowledge,  in  which  he  exceeded  all 
men.  He  never  has  attempted  anything  for  which 
his  powers  did  not  qualify  him.  There  is  not  one 
disgraceful  failure  in  all  his  poems.  The  case  with 
Pope  was  widely  different.  He  wrote  a  moral  didac- 
tic poem.  He  wrote  odes.  He  tried  his  hand  at 
comedy.  He  meditated  an  epic.  All  these  were  fail- 
ures. Horace  never  would  have  fallen  into  such  mis- 
takes." That  view  is  enforced  in  Macaulay's  remarks 
on  Pope's  paraphrase  of  the  Ninth  Ode  in  the  Fourth 
Book  of  Horace. 

"Sages  and  Chiefs  long  since  had  birth 
Ere  Caesar  was,  or  Newton  named. 

These  raised  new  Empires  o'er  the  Earth ; 
And  those  new  Heavens  and  Systems  framed. 

Vain  was  the  Chief's,  the  Sage's,  pride! 

They  had  no  Poet,  and  they  died. 

In  vain  they  schemed,  in  vain  they  bled! 

They  had  no  poet,  and  are  dead." 

"I  do  not  see,"  writes  Macaulay,  "the  smallest  merit 
in  this  affected  verse,  which  I  suppose  was  meant 
to  be  very  striking  and   sublime.     Besides,  what  in 


LORD  MACAULAY  13 

Horace,  like  everything  in  his  works,  is  excellent 
sense,  is  false  and  ridiculous  in  the  imitation.  It  is 
true  that  the  warriors  who  lived  before  Agamemnon 
are  almost  utterly  forgotten,  and  excite  no  interest, 
while  Agamemnon  is  remembered  as  Homer's  hero. 
But  it  is  not  true  that  the  Chiefs  who  preceded  Caesar, 
or  the  Sages  who  preceded  Newton,  are  forgotten. 
Nor  is  it  true  that  either  Caesar  or  Newton  owes  his 
fame  to  poetry.  Every  verse,  in  which  either  of  them 
is  mentioned,  might  be  burned  without  any  diminu- 
tion of  their  fame."  Horace,  again,  made  a  fine  and 
apt  allusion  to  the  old  song,  which  Curius  and  Camil- 
lus  used  to  sing  as  boys  in  the  streets  of  Rome,  telHng 
each  other  that,  if  they  did  right,  they  would  all  be  kings 
together.    This  was  how  Pope  translated  the  passage  : 

"Yet  every  child  another  song  will  sing; 

'Virtue,  brave  boys!     'Tis  Virtue  makes  a  king.' 
^  Mil  ^  ^ 

And  say,  to  which  shall  our  applause  belong. 
This  new  Court  jargon,  or  the  good  old  song? 
The  modern  language  of  corrupted  Peers, 
Or  what  was  spoke  at  Cressy  and  Poitiers?" 

Bishop  Warburton,  with  the  partiaHty  of  an  editor, 
thought  Pope's  version  superior  to  the  Latin  original. 
"Why  so?"  asked  Macaulay.  "Horace  refers  to  a 
real  old  Roman  song  which  boys  sang  at  play.     Pope's 


14       THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

imitation  is  only  an  imaginary  allusion.  Who  ever 
heard  an  English  boy  sing  that  Virtue  made  kings? 
And  what  song  to  that  effect  existed  at  the  time  of 
Cressy  and  Poitiers?" 

Macaulay  was  fond  of  inditing  observations  on 
human  character,  and  on  the  conduct  of  life,  which 
have  about  them  a  perceptible  flavour  of  autobiogra- 
phy. Swift  had  pronounced  that  discretion  in  states- 
men was  "usually  attended  with  a  strong  desire  for 
money,  with  a  want  of  pubHc  spirit  and  principle, 
with  servile  flattery  and  submission,  and  with  a  per- 
petual wrong  judgment,  when  the  owners  came  into 
power  and  high  place,  how  to  dispose  of  favour 
and  preferment."  "I  doubt  this,"  said  Macaulay. 
"Swift  wrote  with  all  the  spleen  of  a  man  of  genius, 
who  had  been  outstripped  by  dunces  in  the  career  of 
preferment.  Neither  my  own  experience,  nor  his- 
tory, leads  me  to  think  that  the  discretion  which  so 
often  raises  men  of  mediocrity  to  high  posts  is  neces- 
sarily, or  generally,  connected  with  avarice,  want  of 
principle,  or  servility.  Take  as  instances  Cardinal 
Fleury,  Pelham,  the  late  Lord  Liverpool,  and  the 
present  Lord  Spencer."^    In  the  "Essay  on  the  Fates 

*  These  words  were  written  in  July  1835,  not  many  months  after  the 
time  when  Lord  Althorp, — in  the  course  of  nature,  and  to  the  infinite  dis- 


LORD  MACAULAY  15 

of  Clergymen,"  Swift  related  the  disappointments  of 
his  own  career  under  the  transparent  mask  of  the 
brilliant  and  unsuccessful  Eugenio.  "People,"  wrote 
Macaulay,  "speak  of  the  world  as  they  find  it.  I 
have  been  more  fortunate  or  prudent  than  Swift  or 
Eugenio."  What  business,  (he  then  asked,  in  lan- 
guage of  unusual,  and  quite  unproducible,  emphasis,) 
had  such  men  in  such  a  profession  ? 

Edward  Gibbon,  on  an  early  page  of  his  thrice 
admirable  "Vindication,"  explains  his  reason  for  con- 
descending to  notice  the  attacks  upon  his  History. 
"Fame,"  he  says,  "is  the  motive,  it  is  the  reward,  of 
our  labours:  nor  can  I  easily  comprehend  how  it  is 
possible  that  we  should  remain  cold  and  indifferent 
with  regard  to  the  attempts  which  are  made  to  de- 
prive us  of  the  most  valuable  object  of  our  possessions, 
or,  at  least,  of  our  hopes."  "But  what,"  wrote  Ma- 
caulay, "if  you  are  confident  that  these  attempts  will 
be  vain,  and  that  your  book  will  fix  its  own  place?" 
Conyers  Middleton,  in  the  later  editions  of  his  "Free 
Enquiry  into  the  Miraculous  Powers  of  the  Christian 
Church,"  remonstrated  somewhat  querulously  with  a 
clerical  opponent  who  had  called  him  an  apostate 


tress  of  the  Whigs, — was  removed  from  the  leadership  of  the  Commons, 
and  translated,  as  Earl  Spencer,  into  the  House  of  Lords. 


i6      THE  MARGINAL  NOTES   OF 

priest.  "I  do  not  at  all  admire  this  letter,"  said  Ma- 
caulay.  "Indeed  Middleton  should  have  counted  the 
cost  before  he  took  his  part.  He  never  appears  to  so 
little  advantage  as  when  he  complains  in  this  way  of 
the  calumnies  and  invectives  of  the  orthodox.  The 
only  language  for  a  philosopher  in  his  circumstances 
is  that  of  the  first  great  type  of  all  reformers,  Prome- 
theus: ^  or,  in  Milton's  words: 

'To  suffer,  as  to  do, 
Our  strength  is  equal,  nor  the  law  unjust 
That  so  ordains.    This  was  at  first  resolved, 
If  we  were  wise,  against  so  great  a  foe  contending.* " 

Macaulay  invariably  marked  his  books  in  pencil, 
except  four  plays  of  Shakspeare, — Romeo  and  Juliet, 
King  Lear,  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  and  Hamlet, 
— where  everything  is  written  with  ink,  in  a  neat  and 
most  legible  hand.  He  used  the  twelve  volume  edition 
of  1778,  illustrated  with  copious  notes  by  Doctor 
Johnson,  Bishop  Warburton,  Steevens,  and  other  com- 
mentators, whose  emendations  and  criticisms  are 
treated  by  Macaulay  with  discriminating,  but  uncom- 
promising, vigour.  On  the  first  page  of  his  Romeo 
and  Juliet  he  writes:  "An  admirable  opening  scene, 

*  "I  knew  beforehand  the  penalty  which  awaited  me;  for  it  is  in  nature 
that  an  enemy  shoiild  suffer  at  an  enemy's  hands." — Prometlieus  Vinctus  : 
lines  1040-2. 


LORD  MACAULAY  17 

whatever  the  French  critics  may  say.  It  at  once  puts 
us  thoroughly  in  possession  of  the  state  of  the  two 
families.  We  have  an  infinitely  more  vivid  notion  of 
their  feud  from  the  conduct  of  their  servants  than  we 
should  have  obtained  from  a  long  story  told  by  old 
Capulet  to  his  confidant,  a  la  Frangaise.  It  is  bad 
joking,  but  in  character.  The  puns  are  not  Shak- 
speare's,  but  Sampson's  and  Gregory's."  Opposite 
the  passage  about  the  biting  of  thumbs  is  written: 
"This  is  not  what  would  be  commonly  called  fine; 
but  I  would  give  any  six  plays  of  Rowe  for  it."  Of 
the  scene  in  the  street  which  begins  vdth  Mercutio 
asking, 

"Where  the  devil  should  this  Romeo  be? 
Came  he  not  home  to-night?" — 

Macaulay  says,  "This  the  free  conversation  of  lively, 
high-spirited  young  gentlemen;"  and,  \\ath  referrence 
to  the  quarrel  at  the  commencement  of  the  Third  Act, 
he  writes:  "Mercutio,  here,  is  beyond  the  reach  of 
anybody  but  Shakspeare."*    When,  on  his  way  to  the 

*  The  poet,  (wrote  Steevens,)  appeared  to  have  taken  the  suggestion  of 
Mercutio  from  a  single  sentence  in  the  old  story  of  the  Painter's  Palace  of 
Pleasure.  "Another  gentleman  called  Mercutio,  which  was  a  courtlike 
gentleman,  very  well  beloved  of  all  men,  and,  by  reason  of  his  pleasant 
and  coiirteous  behaviour,  in  all  companies  well  entertained."  "Shak- 
speare,"  said  Macaulay,  "was  just  the  man  to  expand  a  hint  like  this. 
How  much  he  has  made  of  Thersites,  who  is  nothing  in  Homer!" 


1 8      THE   MARGINAL  NOTES   OF 

ball-room,  Romeo  tells  Benvolio  that  his  mind  misgives 

**Some  consequence,  yet  hanging  in  the  stars, 
Shall  bitterly  begin  his  fearful  date 
With  this  night's  revels," 

Macaulay  writes:  ''This  as  fine  an  instance  of  pre- 
sentiment as  I  remember  in  poetry.  It  throws  a  sad- 
ness over  all  the  gaiety  that  follows,  and  prepares  us 
for  the  catastrophe."  At  the  close  of  the  Third  Act 
he  says:  "Very  fine  is  the  way  in  which  Juliet  at  once 
withdraws  her  whole  confidence  from  the  nurse  with- 
out disclosing  her  feelings;"  and  when,  in  the  ensu- 
ing scene,  the  poor  child  commits  her  life  to  the  hands 
of  Friar  Lawrence,  Macaulay  remarks  on  the  wonder- 
ful genius  with  which  the  poet  delineates  a  timid,  deh- 
cate,  girl  of  fourteen  excited  and  exalted  to  an  act  of 
desperate  courage.  The  respect  which  he  paid  to 
Shakspeare,  and  to  Shakspeare's  creations,  was  very 
seldom  extended  to  Shakspeare's  commentators. 

"Now,  afore  God,  this  reverend  holy  friar 
All  our  whole  city  is  much  bound  to  him." 

"Warburton,"  writes  Macaulay,  "proposed  to  read 
'hynm'  for  'him'; — the  most  ludicrous  emendation 
ever  suggested." 

Of  the   actor's   favourite   passage,   about   Queen 


LORD  MACAULAY  19 

Mab  and  her  doings,  Macaulay  says:  ''This  speech, 
— full  of  matter,  of  thought,  of  fancy,  as  it  is, — seems 
to  me,  like  much  of  this  play,  to  be  not  in  Shakspeare's 
very  best  manner.  It  is  stuck  on  like  one  of  Horace's 
'purple  patches.'  It  does  not  seem  to  spring  natu- 
rally out  of  the  conversation.  This  is  a  fault  which, 
in  his  finest  works,  Shakspeare  never  commits."  "I 
think  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  (such  was  Macaulay 's  ulti- 
mate conclusion,)  "is  the  play  in  which  Shakspeare's 
best  and  worst  modes  of  writing  are  exhibited  in  the 
closest  juxtaposition.  If  we  knew  the  precise  order 
in  which  his  pieces  followed  each  other,  I  am  per- 
suaded that  we  should  find  that  this  play  was  the  turn- 
ing point  in  the  history  of  that  most  wonderful  and 
sublime  genius.  The  comic  part  is  almost  uniformly 
good.  His  comic  manner  attained  perfection  earlier 
than  his  tragic  manner.  There  are  passages  in  Romeo 
and  Juliet  equal  to  anything  in  Lear  or  Othello;  but 
there  are  also  very  many  passages  as  poor  as  anything 
in  Love's  Labour  Lost.  Arimanes  and  Oromasdes 
were  fighting  for  him.  At  last  Oromasdes  had  him  all 
to  himself."  I  well  remember  how  my  uncle,  in  one 
of  his  very  few  conversations  which  I  can  clearly  re- 
call, bade  me  observe  the  contrast  between  JuHet's 
reception  of  what  she  supposes  to  be  Romeo's  death, 


20        THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

and  Romeo's  reception  of  the  report  of  the  death  of 
JuHet.  He  quoted  to  me,  in  something  of  a  disparag- 
ing and  ironical  tone,  the  Hnes: 

"Hath  Romeo  slain  himself?    Say  thou  but  'I,' 
And  that  bare  vowel  'I'  shall  poison  more 
Than  the  death-darting  eye  of  cockatrice. 
I  am  not  I,  if  there  be  such  an  I; 
Or  those  eyes  shut,  that  make  thee  answer  '  I.' " 

Opposite  these  five  lines  I  now  find  written:  "If  this 
had  been  in  Gibber,  Gibber  would  never  have  heard 
the  last  of  it."  And  then  he  recited,  with  energy  and 
solemn  feeling,  the  First  Scene  of  the  Fifth  Act.  I 
can  still  hear  his  voice  as  he  pronounced  the  words : 

"Is  it  even  so?    Then  I  defy  you,  stars! — 
Thou  know'st  my  lodging.     Get  me  ink  and  paper, 
And  hire  post-horses.     I  will  hence  to-night." 

At  the  point  where  Balthazar  brings  the  evil  tidings 
to  Mantua,  Macaulay  has  written:  "Here  begins  a 
noble  series  of  scenes.  I  know  nothing  grander  than 
the  way  in  which  Romeo  hears  the  news.  It  moves 
me  even  more  than  Lear's  agonies."  Of  the  closing 
passage  in  the  vault  of  death  he  says:  "The  desperate 
calmness  of  Romeo  is  subhme  beyond  expression;  and 
the  manner  in  which  he  is  softened  into  tenderness 


LORD   MACAULAY  21 

when  he  sees  the  body  of  Juhet  is  perhaps  the  most 
affecting  touch  in  all  poetry."^ 

"I  believe,"  said  Macaulay,  "that  Hamlet  was  the 
only  play  on  which  Shakspeare  really  bestowed  much 
care  and  attention."  Macaulay  himself  devoted  to 
the  examination  of  that  drama  as  •much  time  and 
thought  as  if  it  had  been  his  intention  to  edit  it.  It 
would  be  superfluous  to  re-produce  the  eloquent  ex- 
pressions of  unreserved  admiration  with  which  the 
margin  of  almost  every  page  is  thickly  studded.  They 
were  written  for  Macaulay's  own  satisfaction,  and  the 
world  can  appreciate  Hamlet  without  their  aid;  but  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  present  a  few  specimens  of  his 
literary  and  ethical  comments.  He  regarded  the 
dramatic  style  of  the  opening  dialogue  as  "beyond 
praise;"  and  he  appHed  the  unwonted  epithet  of 
"sweet  writing"  to  the  passage  describing  the  peace 
and  calm  in  which  the  natural  world  is  steeped  when 


*  "O,  my  love!  my  -wife! 
Death,  that  hath  sucked  the  honey  of  thy  breath, 
Hath  had  no  power  yet  upon  thy  beauty. 
Thou  art  not  conquered.     Beauty's  ensign  yet 
Is  crimson  in  thy  lips,  and  in  thy  cheeks; 
And  death's  pale  flag  is  not  advanced  there." 

"His  comic  scenes,"  (so  Johnson  wrote  in  his  review  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,) 
"are  happily  wrought;  but  his  pathetic  strains  are  always  polluted  by  some 
unexpected  depravation."  "Surely  not  always!"  said  Macaulay.  "The 
first  scenes  of  the  fifth  act  are  as  near  perfection  as  any  ever  written." 


22       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

"that  season  comes 
Wherein  our  Saviour's  birth  is  celebrated." 

In  the  middle  of  the  same  scene  came  something 
which  pleased  him  less.  ''The  long  story,"  he  said, 
''about  Fortinbras,  and  all  that  follows  from  it,  seems 
to  me  to  be  a  clumsy  addition  to  the  plot."  Of  the 
royal  audience  in  the  room  of  state,  which  immedi- 
ately follows,  Macaulay  writes:  "The  silence  of  Ham- 
let during  the  earlier  part  of  this  scene  is  very  fine,  but 
not  equal  to  the  silence  of  Prometheus  and  Cassandra 
in  the  Prometheus  and  Agamemnon  of  iFschylus." 
In  the  Third  scene  of  the  same  Act,  "There  is,"  he 
says,  "perhaps  a  httle  too  much  extension  given  to 
the  talk  of  Laertes  and  Ophelia,  though  many  lines 
have  great  merit.  But  Shakspeare  meant  to  exhibit 
them  in  the  free  intercourse  of  perfect  confidence  and 
affection,  in  order  that  the  subsequent  distress  of 
Laertes  might  be  more  fully  comprehended.  This  is 
a  common  practice  with  him,  and  explains  many  pas- 
sages which  seem,  at  first  sight,  incongruous  addi- 
tions to  his  best  plays."  With  regard  to  the  strolling 
player's  declamation  about  Pyrrhus,  Macaulay  holds 
that  "the  only  thing  deserving  of  much  admiration  in 
the  speech  is  the  manner  in  which  it  is  raised  above 
the  ordinary  diction  which  surrounds  it.     It  is  poetry 


LORD  MACAULAY  23 

within  poetry, — a  play  within  a  play.  It  was  therefore 
proper  to  make  its  language  bear  the  same  relation  to 
the  language,  in  which  Hamlet  and  Horatio  talk,  which 
the  language  of  Hamlet  and  Horatio  bears  to  the  com- 
mon style  of  conversation  among  gentlemen.  This  is 
a  sufficient  defence  of  the  style,  which  is  undoubtedly 
in  itself  far  too  turgid  for  dramatic,  or  even  for  lyric, 
composition." 

The  opening  of  the  Fourth  Scene  in  the  First  Act, 
on  the  platform  of  the  Castle  at  Elsinore,  suggests  these 
reflections  to  Macaulay.  "Nothing  can  be  finer  than 
this  specimen  of  Hamlet's  peculiar  character.  His 
intellect  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  his  will  or  his  pas- 
sions. Under  the  most  exciting  circumstances,  while 
expecting  every  moment  to  see  the  ghost  of  his  father 
rise  before  him,  he  goes  on  discussing  questions  of 
morals,  manners,  or  politics,  as  if  he  were  in  the  schools 
of  Wittenberg."  Of  the  address  to  Horatio,  in  the 
Third  Act,— 

"Dost  thou  hear? 
Since  my  dear  soul  was  mistress  of  her  choice, 
And  could  of  men  distinguish,  her  election 
Hath  sealed  thee  for  herself," — 

Macaulay  writes:  "An  exquisitely  beautiful  scene. 
It  always  moved  me  more  than  any  other  in  the  play. 


24       THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

There  is  something  very  striking  in  the  way  in  which 
Hamlet, — a  man  of  a  gentle  nature,  quick  in  specula- 
tion, morbidly  sluggish  in  action,  unfit  to  struggle  with 
the  real  evils  of  life,  and  finding  himself  plunged  into 
the  midst  of  them, — delights  to  repose  on  the  strong 
mind  of  a  man  who  had  been  severely  tried,  and  who 
had  learned  stoicism  from  experience.  There  is  won- 
derful truth  in  this."  The  marginal  note  about  the 
conversation  between  Hamlet  and  the  courtier,  in  the 
Fifth  Act,  runs  as  follows:  ''This  is  a  most  admirable 
scene.  The  fooling  of  Osric  is  nothing;  but  it  is  most 
striking  to  see  how  completely  Hamlet  forgets  his 
father,  his  mistress,  the  terrible  duty  imposed  upon 
him,  the  imminent  danger  which  he  has  to  run,  as 
soon  as  a  subject  of  observation  comes  before  him; — 
as  soon  as  a  good  butt  is  offered  to  his  wit.  The 
ghost  of  his  father  finds  him  speculating  on  the  causes 
of  the  decline  of  the  fame  of  Denmark.  Immediately 
before  he  puts  his  uncle's  conscience  to  the  decisive 
test,  he  reads  a  lecture  on  the  principles  of  dramatic 
composition  and  representation.  And  now,  just  after 
OpheHa's  burial,  he  is  analysing  and  describing  the 
fashionable  follies  of  the  age,  with  as  much  apparent 
ease  of  heart  as  if  he  had  never  known  sorrow." 

Macaulay  had  much  to  say  about  the  editors  of 


LORD  MACAULAY  25 

Hamlet.  Two  lines  of  the  most  famous  soliloquy  in 
the  world  were  printed  thus  in  his  copy  of  Shakspeare : 

"Who  would  fardels  bear, 
To  groan  and  sweat  under  a  weary  life?" 

To  this  passage  Doctor  Johnson  had  appended  the 
following  note.  "All  the  old  copies  have  to  'grunt 
and  sweat.'  It  is  undoubtedly  the  true  reading,  but 
can  scarcely  be  borne  by  modem  ears."  "We  want 
Shakspeare,"  said  Macaulay,  "not  your  fine  modern 
English."  Warburton  had  amended  the  words  of 
Hamlet,  "For  if  the  sun  breeds  maggots  in  a  dead  dog, 
being  a  good  kissing  carrion," — by  substituting  "god" 
for  "good."  "This,"  said  Doctor  Johnson,  "is  a 
noble  emendation  which  almost  sets  the  critic  above 
the  author."  "It  is,"  wrote  Macaulay,  "a  noble 
emendation.  Had  Warburton  often  hit  off  such  cor- 
rections, he  would  be  entitled  to  the  first  place  among 
critics."  WTien  Hamlet  decHned  to  kill  his  uncle  in 
the  act  of  praying,  on  the  ground  that  he  would  go 
straight  to  heaven,  Doctor  Johnson  pronounced  that 
the  speech  in  which  "not  content  with  taking  blood 
for  blood,  he  contrived  damnation  for  his  enemy,  was 
too  horrible  to  be  read  or  uttered."  "Johnson,"  said 
Macaulay,  "does  not  understand  the  character. 
Hamlet  is  irresolute;  and  he  makes  the  first  excuse 


26       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

that  suggests  itself  for  not  striking.  If  he  had  met  the 
King  drunk,  he  would  have  refrained  from  avenging 
himself  lest  he  should  kill  both  soul  and  body." 

Macaulay  gave  to  King  Lear  as  close  a  study  as  to 
Hamlet,  and  he  was  moved  by  it  even  more  profoundly. 
Before  the  Third  Scene  of  the  First  Act  he  writes: 
"Here  begins  the  finest  of  all  human  performances." 
He  judged  Shakspeare's  Lear  by  what  to  him  was  a 
very  high  standard  of  comparison, — the  masterpieces 
of  that  Attic  Tragedy  which,  for  several  years  together, 
he  used  to  read  through,  from  end  to  end,  yearly.  In 
the  Second  Scene  of  the  Second  Act,  opposite  Corn- 
wall's description  of  the  fellow  who  has  been  praised 
for  bluntness,  he  writes:  "Excellent!  It  is  worth 
while  to  compare  these  moral  speeches  of  Shakspeare 
with  those  which  are  so  much  admired  in  Euripides. 
The  superiority  of  Shakspeare's  observations  is  im- 
mense. But  the  dramatic  art  with  which  they  are 
introduced, — always  in  the  right  place, — always  from 
the  right  person, — is  still  more  admirable."  When 
Lear  despatches  Gloucester  on  a  second  message  to 
Regan  and  her  husband, — 

"The  King  would  speak  with  Cornwall.    The  dear 
father 


LORD  MACAULAY  27 

Would  with  his  daughter  speak;  commands  her 

service. 
Are  they  informed  of  this?"— 

Macaulay  pronounces  the  passage  superior  to  any 
speech  of  passion  in  the  Greek  Drama.  He  observes 
how  the  nonsense  of  the  poor  fool  about  the  eels  and 
the  buttered  hay,  "coming  in  between  the  bursts  of  the 
King's  agony,  heightens  the  effect  beyond  description." 
And  of  the  appeal  to  Goneril  in  the  same  scene, — 

"Now  I  pr'ythee,  daughter,  do  not  make  me  mad! 
I  will  not  trouble  thee,  my  child;  farewell!" 

he  says,  "This  last  struggle  between  rage  and  tender- 
ness is,  I  think,  unequalled  in  poetry."  When  the 
outraged  father  breaks  forth  into  the  terrible  apos- 
trophe commencing 

"O,  let  not  women's  weapons,  water-drops, 
Stain  my  man's  cheeks!" 

Macaulay  writes,  "Where  is  there  anything  like  this 
in  the  world?" 

If  my  uncle  had  been  composing  literary  criticism 
for  the  Edinburgh  Review  he  would  have  been  more 
frugal  of  his  superlatives.  But  these  spontaneous  and 
unstudied  expressions  of  admiration  will  have  a  value 
of  their  own  for  those  who  love  great  poetry,  as  indi- 


28       THE  MARGINAL   NOTES  OF 

eating  the  awe  and  emotion  produced  upon  an  im- 
pressionable mind,  of  exceptional  power,  by  the  loftiest 
work  of  mankind's  finest  genius.  There  is  ample 
proof  in  every  act  and  scene  of  King  Lear  that  Macau- 
lay's  judgment  was  not  asleep,  and  that  his  praise  was 
guided  by  discrimination.  With  regard  to  the  open- 
ing of  the  play  he  writes:  'Tdolising  Shakspeare  as  I 
do,  I  cannot  but  feel  that  the  whole  scene  is  very  un- 
natural. He  took  it,  to  be  sure,  from  an  old  story. 
What  miracles  his  genius  has  brought  out  from  mate- 
rials so  unpromising!"  Of  the  quarrel  between  Kent 
and  Cornwall's  steward  he  says:  *Tt  is  rather  a  fault 
in  the  play,  to  my  thinking,  that  Kent  should  behave 
so  very  insolently  in  this  scene.  A  man  of  his  rank  and 
sense  should  have  had  more  self-command  and  dig- 
nity even  in  his  anger.  One  can  hardly  blame  Corn- 
wall for  putting  him  in  the  stocks."  "Albany,"  said 
Macaulay,  "is  very  slightly  touched;  yet,  with  an  art 
peculiar  to  Shakspeare,  quite  enough  to  give  us  a 
very  good  idea  of  the  man ; — amiable,  and  not  deficient 
in  spirit,  but  borne  down  by  the  violent  temper  of  a 
wife  who  has  brought  him  an  immense  dowry.  Corn- 
wall is,  like  Albany,  slightly  touched,  but  with  wonder- 
ful skill.  No  poet  ever  made  such  strong  likenesses 
with  so  few  strokes."     In  the  Fourth  Scene  of  the 


LORD  MACAULAY  29 

Third  Act,  where  Lear  insists  that  his  two  followers 
should  seek  cover  from  the  storm,  Macaulay  writes: 
"The  softening  of  Lear's  nature  and  manners,  under 
the  discipHne  of  severe  sorrow,  is  most  happily  marked 
in  several  places;"  and,  where  Edgar  issues  from  the 
hovel,  attention  is  called  to  the  wonderful  contrast 
between  the  feigned  madman,  and  the  King  whose 
brain  is  beginning  to  turn  in  earnest.  Doctor  John- 
son, at  the  end  of  the  play,  made  a  solemn  protest 
against  the  unpleasing  character  of  a  story,  "in  which 
the  wicked  prosper,  and  the  virtuous  miscarry."  Ma- 
caulay did  not  concur  in  the  verdict.  "There  is 
nothing,"  he  wrote,  "like  this  last  scene  in  the  world. 
Johnson  talks  nonsense.  Torn  to  pieces  as  Lear's 
heart  had  been,  was  he  to  Hve  happily  ever  after,  as 
the  story-books  say?  Wonderful  as  the  whole  play 
is,  this  last  passage  is  the  triumph  of  Shakspeare's 
genius.     Every  character  is  perfectly  supported." 

Macaulay  reckoned  Othello  the  best  play  extant 
in  any  language ;  but  it  shows  none  of  his  pencil  marks. 
It  may  well  be  that  he  had  ceased  reading  it,  because 
he  knew  the  whole  of  it  by  heart. ^    The  specimens 

*  Macaulay  did  not  affect  to  underrate  the  extraordinary  strength  of 
his  memory.  Bishop  Monk  wrote  of  Dr.  Bentley:  "In  the  faculty  of 
memory  he  has  himself  candidly  declared  that  he  was  not  particularly 
gifted."     "I  do  not  think  much  of  this  declaration,"  said  Macaulay.     "It 


30       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

which  have  already  been  given  of  his  annotations  suf- 
ficiently illustrate  the  spirit  in  which  he  always  read 
his  poet.  Everpvhere  may  be  found  the  same  rever- 
ential delight  in  Shakspeare,  and  the  same  disrespect- 
ful attitude  towards  Shakspeare's  commentators. 
When,  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  a  cloud  is  likened  to 
a  bear  or  a  lion,  a  castle  or  a  mountain,  Steevens  con- 
sidered himself  bound  to  make  this  observation. 
"Perhaps  Shakspeare  received  the  thought  from  the 
Second  Book  of  Holland's  translation  of  Pliny's  Nat- 
ural History:  'In  one  place  there  appeareth  the  re- 
semblance of  a  waine  or  a  chariot;  in  another  of 
a  beare.'"  "Solemn  nonsense!"  said  Macaulay. 
"Had  Shakspeare  no  eyes  to  see  the  sky  with?" 
When  the  poet,  in  the  Prologue  to  Henry  the  Fifth, 
asks: 

"Can  this  cock-pit  hold 
The  vasty  field  of  France  ?     Or  may  we  cram 
Within  this  wooden  O  the  very  casques 
That  did  affright  the  air  at  Agincourt?" 

shows  no  candour,  for  people  are  rather  vain  than  ashamed  of  the  badness 
of  'iheir  memories.  I  have  known  people,  who  had  excellent  memories> 
use  the  same  sort  of  language.  They  reason  thus,  The  less  memorj^,  the 
more  invention.  Congreve  makes  Mirabell  say  something  of  this  sort." 
The  passage  which  was  in  Macaulay's  mind  may  be  found  in  the  Way  of 
the  World,  Act  I.,  Scene  6. 

"  Witwoud.    No,  but  prithee  excuse  me.     My  memory  is  such  a  memory. 

Mirabell.  Have  a  care  of  such  apologies,  Witwoud;  for  I  never  knew 
a  fool  but  he  affected  to  complain,  either  of  the  spleen  or  his  memory." 


LORD    MACAULAY  31 

Johnson  remarks  that  to  call  a  circle  an  O  was  a  very 
mean  metaphor.  "Surely,"  wrote  Macaulay,  "if  O 
were  really  the  usual  name  of  a  circle  there  would  be 
nothing  mean  in  it  any  more  than  in  the  Delta  of  the 
Nile."  The  talk  at  the  Boar's  Head  Tavern  between 
Prince  Hal,  and  Francis  the  drawer,  according  to 
Doctor  Johnson,  "may  entertain  on  the  stage,  but 
affords  not  much  delight  to  the  reader."  "It  is  an 
excellent  scene,  by  your  leave.  Doctor:"  is  Macaulay 's 
rejoinder.  Warburton  pronounced  the  first  line  of 
the  Fool's  prophecy,  in  the  Third  Act  of  King  Lear, 
to  be  corrupt.  "Or  ere  I  go,"  he  says,  "is  not  Eng- 
lish." "Warburton,"  (wrote  Macaulay,)  "had  for- 
gotten his  Psalter,  'Or  ever  your  pots  be  made  hot 
with  thorns.'  And  in  the  Book  of  Daniel,  'Or  ever 
they  came  at  the  bottom  of  the  den.'  "  Where  Lear 
prays  that  "cadent  tears"  may  fret  his  daughter's 
cheeks,  Steevens  appends  the  following  note.  "Ca- 
dent  tears  ;  that  is,  jailing  tears.  Doctor  Warburton 
would  read  candent.^'  "More  fool  Warburton;"  said 
Macaulay. 

In  the  Second  Act  of  Midsummer  Night's  Dream 
Oberon  bids  Puck  remember — 

"Since  once  I  sat  upon  a  promontory, 
And  heard  a  mermaid,  on  a  dolphin's  back, 


32       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES   OF 

Uttering  such  dulcet  and  harmonious  breath 
That  the  rude  sea  grew  civil  at  her  song; 
And  certain  stars  shot  madly  from  their  spheres 
To  hear  the  sea-maid's  musick." 


Warburton  maintained  that  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  was 
the  mermaid,  "to  denote  her  beauty,  and  intemperate 
lust;"  that  the  dolphin  was  Mary's  husband  the 
Dauphin  of  France;  that  the  rude  sea  was  "Scotland, 
encircled  by  the  ocean;"  and  that  the  stars,  which 
shot  from  their  spheres,  were  those  great  English 
noblemen  who  had  espoused  Mary's  quarrel.  "I  do 
not,"  wrote  Macaulay,  "believe  that  Shakspeare 
meant  any  allusion  to  Mary  Queen  of  Scots.  If  he 
did,  he  was  a  very  bad  courtier;  for  he  has  alluded 
only  to  her  charms,  and  suppressed  all  allusion  to  her 
vices.  Who  ever  heard  of  the  licentiousness  of  mer- 
maids? And,  as  to  the  dolphin,  the  Dauphin  had 
been  king  of  France,  and  had  been  dead,  many  years 
before  any  of  the  stars  shot  from  their  spheres  in  con- 
sequence of  Mary's  fascinations.  I  allow  that  War- 
burton's  theory  is  ingenious."  Later  on  in  Midsum- 
mer Night's  Dream,  in  an  ironical  mood,  he  directed 
the  attention  of  the  commentators  to  an  historical 
blunder  on  the  part  of  the  poet.  When  Hippolyta  re- 
lates how  she  had  once  been  out  hunting  with  Hercules 


LORD   MACAULAY  33 

and  Cadmus,  Macaulay  says:  "Cadmus  had  been 
turned  into  a  snake  some  generations  before  Hercules 
was  bom.  This  may  be  added  to  the  Hst  of  Shak- 
speare's  anachronisms."  In  the  Fifth  Act  of  the  play 
he  made  some  amends  to  Warburton. 

"Now  the  hungry  Hon  roars, 
And  the  wolf  beholds  the  moon." 

"As  'tis  the  design  of  these  lines,"  wrote  Warburton, 
"to  characterise  the  animals,  as  they  present  them- 
selves at  the  hour  of  midnight ;  and  as  the  wolf  is  not 
justly  characterised  by  saying  that  he  beholds  the 
moon,  which  other  beasts  of  prey,  then  awake,  do; 
and  as  the  sounds,  which  these  animals  make  at  that 
season,  seem  also  intended  to  be  represented,  I  make 
no  question  but  the  poet  wrote: 

'And  the  wolf  behowls  the  moon.'  " 

"In  my  opinion,"  said  Macaulay,  "this  is  one  of  War- 
burton's  very  best  corrections."  The  passage  in  the 
same  play,  where  Theseus  describes  how  even  "great 
clerks"  sometimes  break  down  over  their  orations  in 
the  presence  of  their  sovereign,  and  how  their  confu- 
sion affords  a  more  flattering  proof  of  loyalty  than 

"the  rattling  tongue 
Of  saucy  and  audacious  eloquence," 


34       THE  MARGINAL    NOTES   OF 

pleased  Macaulay  as  much  as  it  pleases  every  true 
Shaksperean.  "This,"  he  wrote,  "is  Shakspeare's 
manly  sense,  and  knowledge  of  the  world,  introduced 
with  perfect  dramatic  propriety.  How  different  from 
Euripides's  lectures  on  such  subjects!"  The  verses  in 
the  Fourth  Act, 

"Be,  as  thou  wast  wont  to  be. 
See,  as  thou  wast  wont  to  see. 
Dian's  bud  o'er  Cupid's  flower 
Hath  such  force  and  blessed  power," 

he  calls  "beautiful  and  easy  beyond  expression." 
And  on  the  last  page  he  writes:  "A  glorious  play. 
The  love-scenes  Fletcher  might  perhaps  have  written. 
The  fairy  scenes  no  man  but  one  since  the  world  began 
could  have  written." 

Shakspeare's  Roman  dramas  had  an  especial  at- 
traction for  Macaulay.  Never  was  a  great  scholar  so 
little  of  a  pedant.  He  knew  that  what  Shakspeare 
could  teach  him  about  human  nature  was  worth  a 
great  deal  more  than  he  himself  could  have  taught 
Shakspeare  about  Roman  history  and  Roman  institu- 
tions. He  was  well  aware  how  very  scanty  a  stock  of 
erudition  will  qualify  a  transcendent  genius  to  pro- 
duce admirable  literary  effects;  and  he  infinitely  pre- 
ferred Shakspeare's  Romans,  and  even  his  Greeks,  to 


LORD   MACAULAY  35 

the  classical  heroes  of  Ben  Jonson,  and  Addison,  and 
Racine,  and  Corneille,  and  Voltaire.  Of  the  conver- 
sation in  the  street  between  Brutus  and  Cassius,  in 
the  First  Act  of  Julius  Caesar,  Macaulay  says:  "These 
two  or  three  pages  are  worth  the  whole  French  drama 
ten  times  over;"  and,  in  his  Httle  essay  at  the  end  of 
the  play,  he  writes,  "The  last  scenes  are  huddled  up, 
and  affect  me  less  than  Plutarch's  narrative.  But  the 
working  up  of  Brutus  by  Cassius,  the  meeting  of  the 
conspirators,  the  stirring  of  the  mob  by  Antony,  and, 
(above  all,)  the  dispute  and  reconciHation  of  the  two 
generals,  are  things  far  beyond  the  reach  of  any  other 
poet  that  ever  lived."  He  frequently  notices  the  art 
with  which  the  dramatist  turned  to  account  the  most 
slender  materials.  When  Julius  Caesar  expressed  his 
preference  for  having  those  about  him 

"That  are  fat; 
Sleek-headed  men,  and  such  as  sleep  o'  nights;" 

"Plutarch's  hint,"  (said  Macaulay,)  "is  admirably 
expanded  here."  When  Steevens  reminds  the  reader 
that  Cleopatra's  story  of  the  salt  fish  on  Antony's 
hook  was  taken  from  North's  Plutarch,  "Yes,"  says 
Macaulay,  "but  how  happily  introduced,  and  with 
what  skill  and  spirit  worked  up  by  Shakspeare!"    He 


36       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

keenly  appreciated  the  unerring  literary  instinct  which 
detected,  and  exhibited  in  enduring  colours,  the  true 
character  of  young  Octavius  Caesar.  "It  is  most  re- 
markable," he  writes,  ''that  Shakspeare's  portrait  of 
Augustus  should  be  so  correct.  Through  all  the  flat- 
tery of  his  eulogists,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  he  was  exactly 
the  crafty,  timid,  cold-blooded  man  that  he  is  repre- 
sented here." 

Coriolanus  was  a  favourite  play  with  Macaulay; 
and  all  the  more  because  it  related  to  a  period  of  his- 
tory about  which,  in  his  view,  Shakspeare  knew  just 
as  much,  and  as  Httle,  as  his  learned  commentators. 
With  reference  to  the  passage  where  the  Tribune 
Sicinius  spoke  of  the  Senate  as  "our  assembly,"  War- 
burton  wrote:  "He  should  have  said  your  assembly. 
For  till  the  Lex  Attinia, — the  author  of  which  is  sup- 
posed by  Sigonius,  (De  Vetere  Italiae  Jure,)  to  have 
been  contemporary  with  Quintus  Metellus  Macedoni- 
cus, — the  Tribunes  had  not  the  privilege  of  entering 
the  Senate,  but  had  scats  placed  near  the  door  on  the 
outside  of  the  house."  "Absurd!"  said  Macaulay. 
"Who  knows  anything  about  the  usages  of  the  Senate, 
and  the  privileges  of  the  Tribunes,  in  Coriolanus's 
time?"  Warburton  took  still  greater  exception  to  the  . 
speech  of  Coriolanus  as  reported  by  the  Third  Citizen. 


LORD  MACAULAY  ij 


Cl    I 


I  would  be  Consul,'  (says  he,)  'Aged  custom, 
But  by  your  voices,  will  not  so  permit  me. 
Your  voices  therefore!  " 

"This,"  observed  the  Bishop,  "was  a  strange  inatten- 
tion. The  Romans  at  this  time  had  but  lately  changed 
the  Regal  for  the  Consular  Government;  for  Corio- 
lanus  was  banished  the  eighteenth  year  after  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  kings."  "Well!"  wrote  Macaulay; 
"but  there  had  certainly  been  elective  magistracies  in 
Rome  before  the  expulsion  of  the  kings,  and  there 
might  have  been  canvassing.  Shakspeare  cared  so 
little  about  historical  accuracy  that  an  editor  who 
notices  expressions,  which  really  are  not  grossly  inac- 
curate, is  unpardonable."  In  the  same  scene  Brutus 
says  of  Coriolanus 

"Censorinus,  darhng  of  the  people, 
And  nobly  named  so,  twice  being  Censor, 
Was  his  great  ancestor." 

Warburton  justly  remarks  that  the  first  Censor  was 
created  half  a  century  after  the  days  of  Coriolanus. 
Shakspeare,  (he  explains,)  had  misread  his  author- 
ities, and  had  confounded  the  ancestors  of  Coriolanus 
with  his  posterity.  "This  undoubtedly  was  a  mis- 
take," said  Macaulay;  "and  what  does  it  matter?" 
On  the  last  page  he  writes:  "A  noble  play.    As  usual, 

132813 


38       THE  MARGINAL   NOTES   OF 

Shakspeare  had  thumbed  his  translation  of  Plutarch 
to  rags." 

"With  regard  to  Cicero  as  an  author,"  (so  Nie- 
buhr  wrote,)  "I  cannot  say  anything  better  than  was 
said  by  Quintilian, — that  the  pleasure  which  a  man 
takes  in  the  works  of  Cicero  is  the  standard  by  which 
we  may  estimate  his  own  intellectual  culture."  It 
was  a  test  which  Macaulay  was  qualified  to  pass;  for 
he  read  Cicero's  \Yorks  twice  during  those  three  years 
at  Calcutta  when  he  was  reading  Plautus  four  times, 
and  Demosthenes  thrice.  It  was  all  a  labour  of  love. 
Macaulay  read  Greek  and  Latin  for  their  own  sake, 
and  not  in  order  to  use  them  for  purposes  of  literary 
copy.  He  has  left  us  eight  pages,  as  fascinating  as 
any  that  he  ever  penned,  about  the  Phalaris  contro- 
versy in  the  Essay  on  Sir  WilHam  Temple;  and  six 
pages,  on  the  same  topic,  in  the  short  article  on  Bishop 
Atterbury.  These  twelve  or  fifteen  paragraphs,  and 
the  prefaces  to  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  are  the  sole 
visible  fruit  of  the  thousands  of  hours  which  he  spent 
over  the  classical  writers  during  the  last  thirty  years 
of  his  life.  His  manuscript  notes  extend  through  the 
long  range  of  Greek  authors  from  Hesiod  to  Athenaeus, 
and  of  Latin  authors  from  Cato  the  Censor, — through 


LORD  MACAULAY  39 

Livy,  and  Sallust,  and  Tacitus,  and  Aulus  Gellius, 
and  Suetonius, — down  to  the  very  latest  Augustan 
histories.  They  testify  to  his  vivid  and  comprehen- 
sive knowledge  of  the  facts,  dates,  and  personages  of 
the  ancient  world.  That  knowledge  was  acquired, 
not  at  second  hand  from  the  dissertations  of  other 
scholars,  but  by  strenuous  and  enraptured  study  of 
the  original  books  themselves.  Macaulay  had  always 
in  his  head  the  materials,  and  the  thoughts,  for  an 
Essay  on  Greek  and  Roman  history  which  might  have 
ranked  with  the  Essay  on  CHve,  and  with  the  article 
in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  on  William  Pitt.  But 
it  was  not  so  to  be ;  and  a  Life  of  Pericles,  or  a  Life  of 
Cicero,  are  among  the  unwritten  biographies  which 
were  buried  with  him  under  the  pavement  of  Poet's 
Comer  in  the  transept  of  the  Abbey. 

Cicero's  philosophical  writings  were  among  the 
productions  of  their  own  class  which  Macaulay  read 
with  the  greatest  profit  to  himself.  He  was  favour- 
ably disposed  towards  Cicero's  view::  on  the  crucial 
problem  of  the  foundations  of  morahty;  for  he  was 
an  Academician  so  far  as  he  was  anything.  Those 
two  parallel  lines  in  pencil,  which  were  his  highest 
form  of  compliment,  are  scored  down  page  after  page 
of  the  De  Finibus,  the  Academic  Questions,  and  the 


40       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

Tusculan  Disputations.  "Exquisitely  written,  grace- 
ful, calm,  luminous,  and  full  of  interest;  but  the  Epi- 
curean theory  of  morals  is  hardly  deserving  of  refu- 
tation." That  sentence  relates  to  the  first  book  of 
the  De  Finibus;  and  for  Cicero's  exposition  of  the 
Stoic  theory,  as  apart  from  the  theory  itself,  he  has 
nothing  but  commendation.  It  is  "Trashy  sophistry, 
admirably  explained;"  or  "Beautifully  lucid,  though 
the  system  is  excessively  absurd."  "Fine  anointing 
for  broken  bones!"  he  writes,  when  we  are  told  that 
the  sage,  whose  child  has  died,  grieves  for  the  possi- 
bilities of  happiness  which  his  child  has  missed,  and 
not  for  his  own  loss.  "Does  not  a  man  feel  grief," 
(Macaulay  asked,)  "when  he  sends  his  favourite  son 
to  India?"  He  placed  Cicero's  treatises  on  oratory 
altogether  above  anything  that  ever  had  been  writ- 
ten in  that  department  of  literature.  He'  greatly  ad- 
mired the  theological  disputations,  and  the  discussions 
on  omens,  prodigies,  and  oracles.  He  pronounced  the 
first  book  of  the  De  Natura  Deorum  "Equal  to  any- 
thing that  Cicero  ever  did;"  and  he  esteemed  the  De 
Divinatione,  (and  how  could  he  do  otherwise?)  as 
among  the  most  curiously  interesting  of  human  com- 
positions. Cicero's  argument  against  the  credibility 
of  visions  and  prophecies,  in  the  Second  Book  of  the 


LORD  MACAULAY  41 

De  Divinatione,  is  double-lined  in  Macaulay's  copy. 

That  eloquent  display  of  scepticism,  on  the  part  of 

the  most  famous  and  learned  professional  soothsayer 

that  ever  lived,  was  in  his  mind  when  he  read  Ben 

Jonson's  Catiline. 

"LenHdus.  The  Augurs  all  are  constant  /  am  meant. 
Catiline.  They  had  lost  their  science  else." 

"The  dialogue  here,"  wrote  Macaulay,  "is  good  and 
natural.  But  it  is  strange  that  so  excellent  a  scholar 
as  Jonson  should  represent  the  Augurs  as  giving  any 
encouragement  to  Lentulus's  dreams.  The  Augurs 
were  the  first  nobles  of  Rome.  In  this  generation 
Pompey,  Hortensius,  Cicero,  and  other  men  of  the 
same  class,  belonged  to  the  college." 

Macaulay  had  a  special  liking  for  the  De  Officiis, 
and  was  in  general  agreement  with  Cicero's  doctrine 
of  duty;  although  he  protested  vehemently  whenever 
the  author  thought  fit  to  draw  his  examples  of  the  just 
man  made  perfect  from  Scipio  Nasica  and  Lucius 
Opimius, — the  pair  of  worthies  who  murdered  the 
brothers  Gracchi.^    My  uncle  regarded  the  De  Officiis 

*  That  was  after  Cicero  had  become  a  partisan  of  the  aristocracy.  As 
late  in  the  day  as  his  oration  on  the  Agrarian  Law  he  spoke  of  Tiberius 
and  Caius  Gracchus  as  "two  most  illustrious  men  of  genius,  who  were 
among  the  very  best  friends  of  the  Roman  people."  "I  believe,"  wrote 
Macaulay,  "that  when  Cicero  was  adopted  into  the  class  of  nobles,  his 
tastes  and  opinions  underwent  a  change,  like  those  of  many  other  poli- 
ticians." 


42       THE  MARGINAL   NOTES  OF 

as  a  young  man's  model  for  Latin  prose  composition. 
When  I  first  went  to  Cambridge  he  solemnly  enjoined 
me  to  read  it  during  mathematical  lecture,  and  thereby 
involved  me  in  a  scrape  which  I  had  long  reason  to 
remember.  Even  for  Cicero's  poetry  Macaulay  had 
enough  respect  to  distinguish  carefully  between  the 
bad,  and  the  less  bad.  Whatever  that  praise  may  be 
worth,  he  characterises  the  translations  from  ^schylus 
and  Sophocles  in  the  Second  Book  of  the  Tusculan 
Disputations  as  ''Cicero's  best."  He  enjoyed  and 
valued  Cicero's  Letters  to  a  degree  that  he  found  dif- 
ficult to  express.  The  document  which  he  most  ad- 
mired, in  the  whole  collection  of  the  correspondence, 
was  Caesar's  answer  to  Cicero's  message  of  gratitude 
for  the  humanity  which  the  conqueror  had  displayed 
towards  those  political  adversaries  who  had  fallen  into 
his  power  at  the  surrender  of  Corfinium.  It  con- 
tained, (so  Macaulay  used  to  say,)  the  finest  sentence 
ever  written.  "Meum  factum  probari  abs  te,  trium- 
pho,  gaudeo.  Neque  illiid  me  movet  quod  ii,  qui  me 
dimissi  sunt,  discessisse  dicuntur  ut  mihi  rursus  helium 
injerrent ;  nihil  enim  malo  qiiam  et  me  mei  similem 
esse,  et  illos  sui.'^  *  Opposite  that  sentence  appear  the 
words:  "Noble  fellow!" 

*  "I  triumph  and  rejoice  that  my  action  should  have  obtained  your 


LORD   MACAULAY  43 

Macaulay's  pencilled  observations  upon  each  suc- 
cessive speech  of  Cicero  form  a  continuous  history  of 
the  great  orator's  public  career,  and  a  far  from  un- 
sympathetic analysis  of  his  mobile,  and  singularly 
interesting,  character.  The  early  efforts  of  the  young 
advocate  were  mainly  directed  to  the  defence  and 
rescue  of  quiet  citizens  from  the  rapacity  and  cruelty 
of  Sulla's  partisans.  Of  the  oration  on  behalf  of 
Quintius,  deHvered  when  Cicero  was  only  six  and 
twenty,  Macaulay  writes:  "I  hke  this  speech  better 
than  any  of  the  Greek  speeches  in  mere  private  cases. 
It  would  in  any  age  produce  a  prodigious  effect  on  any 
tribunal.  It  would  seem  that  the  confusion  of  the 
times,  and  the  speedy  ways  of  getting  rich  which  the 
proscriptions  had  opened  to  cupidity,  had  destroyed 
all  feehng  of  honour  and  honesty  in  many  minds." 
He  considered  the  oration  for  Roscius  of  Ameria, 
with  its  exposure  of  the  villanies  perpetrated  by  Sulla's 
freedman,  the  infamous  Chrysogonus,  as  more  credit- 
able to  Cicero's  heart  than  any  that  he  ever  made. 
"I  cannot,"  he  said,  ''help  thinking  that  he  strength- 
ened   the   language    after    Sulla's   resignation.     But, 

approval.  Nor  am  I  disturbed  when  I  hear  it  said  that  those,  whom  I  have 
sent  off  alive  and  free,  will  again  bear  arms  against  me  ;  for  there  is  noth- 
ing which  I  so  much  covet  as  that  I  should  be  like  myself  and  they  like 
themselves." 


44       THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

after  making  full  allowance  for  re-touching,  it  is  im- 
possible to  deny  that  he  performed  a  bold  service  to 
humanity  and  to  his  country.  Si  sic  omnia!"  With 
regard  to  the  first,  and  shorter,  oration  against  Verres, 
Macaulay  remarks:  "There  is  great  force  about  this 
speech.  Cicero  had  not  attained  that  perfect  mastery 
of  the  whole  art  of  rhetoric  which  he  possessed  at  a 
later  period.  But  on  the  other  hand  there  is  a  free- 
dom, a  boldness,  a  zeal  for  popular  rights,  a  scorn  of 
the  vicious  and  insolent  gang  whom  he  afterwards 
called  the  boni,  which  makes  these  early  speeches  more 
pleasing  than  the  later.  Flattery,— and,  after  his 
exile,  cowardice, — destroyed  all  that  was  generous 
and  elevated  in  his  mind."  Of  the  Third  Section  of 
the  Second  Oration  he  says:  "A  very  powerful  speech 
indeed.  It  makes  my  blood  boil,  less  against  Verres 
than  against  the  detestable  system  of  governrfientj 
which  Cicero  was  so  desirous  to  uphold,  though  he; 
himself  was  not  an  accompHce  in  the  crimes  whicK 
were  inseparable  from  it." 

It  was  IMacaulay's  fixed  behef  that  the  debate  on 
the  punishment  of  the  Catihnarian  conspirators  was  a 
fateful  crisis  in  Cicero's  history.  Cassar  had  almost 
persuaded  the  Senate  to  refrain  from  sending  Roman 
citizens  to  a  violent  and  illegal  death,  when  Cicero  the 


LORD  MACAULAY  45 

Consul, — in  an  evil  hour  for  his  fame,  and  still  more 
for  his  happiness, — raised  his  voice  against  the  policy 
of  clemency  and  self-control.     "Fine  declamation:" 
said  Macaulay.     "But  it  is  no  answer  to  Caesar's  ad- 
mirable speech.    This  was  the  turning  point  of  Cicero's 
life.    He  was  a  new  man,  and  a  popular  man.    Till 
his  Consulship  he  had  always  leaned  against  the  Op- 
timates.    He  had  defended  Sulla's  victims.    He  had 
brought  Verres  to  justice  in  spite  of  strong  aristocrat- 
ical  protection.    He  had  always  spoken  handsomely 
of  the  Gracchi,  and  other  heroes  of  the  democratic 
party.    He  appears,  when  he  became  Consul,  to  have 
been  very  much  liked  by  the  multitude,  and  much 
distrusted  by  the  nobles.     But  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances in  which  he  now  was  placed  rendered  it  his 
duty  to  take  the  side  of  the  aristocracy  on  some  im- 
portant questions.    He  supported  them  on  the  Agra- 
rian Law.    He  also  took  vigorous  measures  against 
Catiline.    They  began  to  coax  and  flatter  him.    He 
went  further.    He  was  hurried  by  adulation,  vanity, 
and  vindictive  feeHng  into  a  highly  unconstitutional 
act  in  favour  of  the  nobles.    He  followed,  with  more 
excuse  indeed,  the  odious  example  set  by  Scipio  Nasica 
and  by  Opimius.    From  that  time  he  was  an  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  the  grandees,  whom  he  hated 


46       THE  MARGINAL   NOTES  OF 

and  despised:  and  who  fully  returned  his  hatred,  and 
despised,  not  his  talents  indeed,  but  his  character." 
Cicero,  and  his  new  political  allies,  had  very  little  in 
common.  At  a  serious  crisis  in  Roman  history  he 
told  Atticus  that  the  leaders  of  the  aristocratic  party 
cared  nothing  about  the  ruin  of  the  Republic  as  long 
as  their  fish-ponds  were  safe,  and  beheved  themselves 
to  have  attained  celestial  honours  if  they  had  great 
mullets  which  came  up  to  be  fed  by  hand.  "These," 
said  Macaulay,  "are  your  boiii .'"  and  on  a  later  occa- 
sion my  uncle  remarks,  in  caustic  language,  on  the 
circumstance  that  the  most  creditable  act  of  Cicero's 
official  career  was  his  effort  to  protect  the  miserable 
provincials  of  Cyprus  from  the  cruelty  and  rapacity 
of  no  less  a  Senator  than  Marcus  Brutus.  Cicero's 
opinion  of  the  nobles  went  steadily  down  as  his  expe- 
rience of  them  grew  more  intimate.  The  time  came 
when  he  confided  to  Atticus  that  they  were  altogether 
insupportable.  'T  cannot  endure,"  he  said,  "to  be 
the  object  of  their  sneering  talk.  They  certainly  do 
not  merit  their  name  of  &awf."  "You  have  found  it 
out  at  last!"  wrote  Macaulay.* 

That  was  the  precise  point  at  which  Cicero's  use- 
fulness as  a  statesman  and  a  patriot  declined,  and  his 

*  Cicero  to  Atticus;  Book  II.  Letter  i;  VI.  i;  IX.  2. 


LORD  MACAULAY  47 

misfortunes  began.  His  nerve  and  courage  were  im- 
paired, and  he  surrendered  his  political  independence 
to  bolder  and  stronger  men.  "Cassar  and  Pompey," 
said  Macaulay,  "liked  Cicero  personally,  it  should 
seem;  but  they  saw  that  he  was  inclined  to  disturb 
their  coalition.  Accordingly  they  let  Clodius  loose 
upon  him;  connived  at  his  being  banished;  fairly 
frightened  him;  and  when  they  now  saw  that  he  had 
been  rendered  thoroughly  tractable,  they  recalled  him 
home.  The  struggle  in  poor  Cicero's  mind  between 
fear  and  self-importance  is  one  which  all  his  great 
powers  are  quite  unable  to  disguise."  Under  cruel 
pressure,  from  both  Pompey  and  Caesar,  Cicero  was 
reluctantly  induced  to  appear  in  court  on  behalf  of 
Gabinius — a  man,  (so  he  complained  to  Atticus,) 
whose  presence  in  the  Roman  Senate  was  a  personal 
disgrace  to  all  his  colleagues.^  "After  having  stooped 
to  defend  Gabinius,"  wrote  Macaulay,  "he  might  well 
bear  to  sit  with  him."  "My  motive,"  (Cicero  once 
said  in  public,)  "for  defending  Gabinius  was  the  de- 
sire to  make  up  the  quarrel  between  us;  for  I  never 
repent  of  behaving  as  if  my  enmities  were  transient, 
and  my  friendships  eternal."  "A  fine  sentence," 
(said  Macaulay,)  "quoted  very  happily  by  Fox.     But 

*  Cicero  to  Atticus,  X.  8. 


48       THE  MARGINAL   NOTES  OF 

poor  Cicero  was  ready  to  sink  into  the  earth  with 
shame,  though  he  tried  to  put  a  good  face  on  the  mat- 
ter." "Meanwhile,"  said  Macaulay,  "it  is  easy  to 
perceive  that  the  vice  of  egotism  was  now  rapidly 
growing  on  Cicero.  He  had  attained  the  highest 
point  of  power  which  he  ever  reached,  and  his  head 
was  undoubtedly  a  little  turned  by  his  elevation. 
Afterwards  this  vile  habit  tainted  his  speaking  and 
writing,  so  as  to  make  much  of  his  finest  rhetoric 
almost  disgusting.  He  gave  himself  airs,  on  all  occa- 
sions, which,  as  Plutarch  tells  us,  made  him  generally 
odious,  and  were  the  real  cause  of  his  exile."  My 
uncle  describes  the  speech  for  the  poet  Archias,  with 
its  exquisitely  worded  encomium  on  the  delights  of 
literature,  as  a  magnificent  composition,  blemished  as 
usual  by  insufferable  egotism.  "What  unhappy  mad- 
ness," he  says,  "led  Cicero  always  to  talk  of  himself?" 
And  of  the  attack  of  Piso  in  the  Senate  he  writes,  "A 
splendid  invective  certainly,  but  he  was  really  mad 
with  vanity."  "The  defence  of  Sextius  is  very  inter- 
esting. Indeed  those  parts  of  the  speech,  which  seem 
most  out  of  place  in  a  forensic  address,  are  liistorically 
the  most  valuable.  Cicero  doubtless  knew  that  his  client 
was  safe,  and  that  the  judges  were  all  Optimates;  and 
so  he  ventured  to  luxuriate  in  narratives  and  disquisi- 


LORD  MACAULAY  49 

tions  not  very  closely  connected  with  the  subject." 
The  tribute  of  adulation  which,  in  the  course  of  that 
speech,  the  orator  paid  to  the  degenerate  aristocracy 
of  the  later  Republic  angered  his  reader  as  he  seldom 
had  been  angered  by  any  passage  in  Hterature.  When 
Cicero  asked  what  sort  of  men  were  these  Optinmtes, 
who  so  well  deserved  their  honourable  title,  Macaulay 
replied  that  they  were  "the  murderers  of  the  Gracchi, 
the  hirehngs  of  Jugurtha,  the  butchers  of  Sulla,  the 
plunderers  of  the  provinces,  the  buyers  and  sellers  of 
magistracies, — such  men  as  Opimius,  and  Scaurus, 
Domitius  Ahenobarbus  and  Caius  Verres."^ 

In  his  comments  on  the  Epistles  to  Atticus  Ma- 
caulay's  S3Tiipathy  with  their  author  is  more  conspicu- 
ous than  in  his  comments  on  the  Speeches.  When 
Cicero  confesses,  at  the  end  of  a  letter  the  contents  of 
which  otherwise  do  him  little  credit,  that  the  loss  of 
his  reader  Sositheus,  whom  he  calls  a  charming  lad, 
had  distressed  him  more  than  the  death  of  a  slave 


*  WMle  Macaulay  was  severe  upon  these  ancient  Romans,  he  did  not 
spare  himself  whenever  he  had  been  betrayed  into  an  error  of  literary 
judgment.  He  makes  these  two  successive  entries  with  reference  to  the 
oration  for  Marcus  Marcellus. 

"A  splendid  and  highly  finished  declamation;  but,  taken  in  connection 
with  Cicero's  letters  written  at  the  time,  it  does  littl*  honour  to  his  charac- 
ter.   September  27,  1835." 

"It  does  him  neither  honour  nor  dishonour.  For  it  is  not  his.  March 
17.  1856." 


50       THE   MARGINAL   NOTES  OF 

might  be  thought  to  justify,  Macaulay  WTites:  "A 
kind-hearted  man,  with  all  his  faults."  When  the 
unhappy  ex-Consul  complained  that  he  had  been 
rudely  expelled  from  on  board  the  ship  of  state,  and 
relegated  against  his  will,  and  before  his  time,  to  the 
haven  of  Hterary  leisure;  "Poor  fellow!"  said  Ma- 
caulay. "He  had  not  the  firmness  to  do  what  he 
felt  to  be  necessary  for  his  peace."  And  when  the 
darkness  gathered  round  Cicero,  and  a  sense  of  im- 
pending danger  filled  the  air; — when  Atticus  was  ab- 
sent from  Rome,  and  amidst  a  crowd  of  flatterers  and 
cHents  he  had  not  a  single  friend  with  whom  he  could 
exchange  a  word  of  confidence;  and  when  he  found 
comfort  nowhere  except  in  the  privacy  of  family  hfe, 
with  his  darling  Tulliola,  and  his  "sweet  little  Cicero"; 
— the  narrative  of  his  sorrows  and  anxieties  seemed 
to  Macaulay  "As  exquisitely  beautiful  a  passage  as 
ever  was  written."  The  melancholy  letters  sent  home 
to  Atticus  from  Illyria  and  Macedonia  during  the 
period  of  Cicero's  banishment  suggested  the  following 
reflections  to  the  English  statesman  at  Calcutta. 
"Poor  fellow!  He  makes  a  pitiful  figure.  But  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  for  him.  Since  I  left  England 
I  have  not  despised  Cicero  and  Ovid  for  their  lamen- 
tations in  exile  as  much  as  I  did."    That  was  a  curi- 


LORD  MACAULAY  51 

ous  illustration  of  character  in  the  case  of  a  brilliant 
and  successful  man  of  four  and  thirty,  who  had  gone 
to  India  for  a  very  few  years  in  order  to  secure  a  com- 
petence, and  fill  a  most  important  and  dignified  ofi&ce. 
When  Cicero  tells  his  friend  how,  on  his  return  from 
exile,  he  was  welcomed  home  by  the  entire  population 
of  the  city,  "That  day,"  said  Macaulay,  "was  indeed 
worth  a  Hfe  to  a  man  so  sensitive,  and  so  passionately 
fond  of  glory."  In  the  Twelfth  Letter  of  the  Ninth 
Book  is  the  passage  commencing,  "Cneius  Pompeius 
is  blockaded  by  a  Roman  army.  He  is  enclosed,  and 
held  captive,  within  a  wall  of  circumvallation  built  by 
Roman  hands.  And  I  five,  and  the  city  stands!  And 
the  Praetors  deHver  their  judgments,  and  the  ^Ediles 
prepare  to  hold  the  public  games,  and  wealthy  men 
calmly  reckon  up  the  value  of  their  investments!" 
"Very  fine  writing,  certainly;"  Macaulay  says.  "I 
like  some  of  the  letters  in  this  book  as  much  as  any  of 
Cicero's  compositions."  * 

After  Caesar's  death  Cicero  emerged  from  a  period 
of  retirement  and  irksome  silence;  and  the  third  and 
last  phase  of  his  oratory  commenced.  Macaulay 
styles  the  Second  PhiHppic  "a  most  wonderful  dis- 
play of  rhetorical  talent,   worthy  of  all  its  fame." 

1  Cicero  to  Atticus,  I.  12;  II.  7;  I.  18;  III.  13;  IV.  i. 


52       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES   OF 

With  regard  to  the  Third  Philippic  he  writes:  "The 
close  of  this  speech  is  very  fine.  His  later  and  earlier 
speeches  have  a  freedom  and  an  air  of  sincerity  about 
them  which,  in  the  interval  between  his  Consulship 
and  Caesar's  death,  I  do  not  find.  During  that  inter- 
val he  was  mixed  up  with  the  aristocratical  party,  and 
yet  afraid  of  the  Triumvirate.  When  all  the  great 
party-leaders  were  dead,  he  found  himself  at  the  head 
of  the  state,  and  spoke  with  a  boldness  and  energy 
which  he  had  not  shown  since  his  youthful  days." 
Macaulay  did  full  justice  to  Cicero's  vigour  and  elo- 
quence at  this  grave  poHtical  conjuncture;  but  he  con- 
demned his  course  of  action,  and  deeply  disapproved 
his  motives.  "His  whole  conduct,"  he  writes,  "was 
as  bad  as  possible.  His  love  of  peace,  the  best  part 
of  his  public  character,  was  overcome  by  personal 
animosity  and  wounded  vanity."  At  the  end  of  the 
last  Philippic  Macaulay  compares  him  with  Demos- 
thenes, whom  he  ranks  above  him  as  an  orator.  "As 
a  man,"  he  writes,  "I  think  of  Cicero  much  as  I  al- 
ways did,  except  that  I  am  more  disgusted  with  his 
conduct  after  Caesar's  death.  I  really  think  that  he 
met  with  little  more  than  his  deserts  from  the  Trium- 
virs. It  is  quite  certain,  as  Livy  says,  that  he  suffered 
nothing  more  than  he  would  have  inflicted.     There  is 


LORD  MACAULAY  53 

an  impatience  of  peaceful  counsels,  a  shrinking  from 
all  plans  of  conciliation,  a  thirst  for  blood,  in  all  the 
Philippics,  which,  (whatever  he  may  say,)  can  be  at- 
tributed only  to  personal  hatred,  and  is  particularly 
odious  in  a  timid  man." 

That  Tully  met  with  his  deserts  at  the  hands  of 
the  Triumvirs  is  a  hard  saying;  but  his  actions  and 
his  utterances,  during  the  last  years  of  his  life,  were 
repugnant,  and  sometimes  even  shocking,  to  Macaulay. 
Caesar  had  shown  himself  a  kind  and  considerate 
friend  to  Cicero,  and  Cicero  had  professed  gratitude 
and  esteem  for  Cassar;  but,  after  Caesar's  murder  in 
the  Senate-house,  Cicero  exulted  over  his  fate  in 
words  as  sharp  and  cruel  as  the  dagger  of  Cassius. 
Antony,  again,  had  urged  Cicero  to  lay  aside  ancient 
enmities,  and  secure  for  himself  a  tranquil  and  hon- 
ourable old  age  as  the  crown  of  his  splendid  career. 
"I  only  wish,"  answered  Cicero,  "that  you  had  ad- 
dressed me  face  to  face,  instead  of  by  writing;  for  you 
might  then  have  perceived  not  by  my  words  alone,  but 
by  my  countenance,  my  eyes,  and  my  forehead,  the 
affection  that  I  bear  to  you.  For, — as  I  always  loved 
you  for  the  attentions  you  have  shown  me,  and  the 
services  you  have  done  me, — so,  in  these  later  days, 
your  public  conduct  has  been  such  that  I  hold  no  one 


54       THE   MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

dearer  than  you."  That  was  how  Cicero  wrote  to 
Antony;  but,  before  a  year  was  over,  he  thus  wrote 
about  Antony  to  one  of  Caesar's  assassins :  "Would  to 
heaven  you  had  invited  me  to  that  noble  feast  which 
you  made  on  the  Ides  of  March !  No  remnants,  most 
assuredly,  would  have  been  left  behind.  *  *  *  I  have 
a  grudge  even  against  so  good  a  man  as  yourself  when 
I  reflect  that  it  was  through  your  intervention  that  this 
pest  of  humanity  is  still  among  the  Hving."  "Infa- 
mous!" wrote  Macaulay.  "Compare  this  with  his 
language  about  Antony  before  their  quarrel." 

None  the  less  did  Macaulay  regard  Cicero  as 
among  the  foremost  men  of  all  the  ages.  I  remember 
paying  him  a  visit  in  his  rose-garden  at  Campden  Hill, 
— as  pleasant  a  corner  of  the  earth  as  any  that  Marcus 
Tullius  himself  possessed  at  Tusculum,  or  Antium,  or 
Arpinum.  I  was  in  a  hurry  to  communicate  to  him 
my  discovery  of  the  magnificent  verses  in  which  Ju- 
venal bids  observe  how  the  world's  two  mightiest 
orators  were  brought  by  their  genius  and  eloquence 
to  a  violent  and  tragic  death.  I  can  almost  repeat 
Macaulay's  exact  words.  "It  is,"  he  said,  "very  fine 
satire;  but  there  is  another  aspect  of  the  question.  A 
man  cannot  expect  to  win  great  fame  without  running 
great  risks  and  perils.     In  spite  of  all  that  Juvenal 


LORD   MACAULAY  55 

says,  Cicero  and  Demosthenes  would  never  have  con- 
sented to  renounce  their  place  in  history  in  order  to 
be  sure  of  dying  quietly  in  their  beds." * 

Macaulay  read  Plato  in  a  ponderous  folio,  sixteen 
inches  long  by  ten  broad,  and  weighing  within  half  an 
ounce  of  twelve  pounds; — which  was  very  near  the 
weight  of  a  regulation  musket  at  the  period  when  he 
himself  was  Secretary  of  War.  Published  by  Mar- 
siHus  Ficinus  at  Frankfort  in  the  year  1602,  it  con- 
tained nearly  fourteen  hundred  closely  printed  pages 
of  antique  Greek  type,  bristling  with  those  contrac- 
tions which  are  a  terror  to  the  luxurious  modern 
scholar.  The  Latin  translation,  arranged  in  parallel 
columns  by  the  side  of  the  original  text,  presents  an 
aspect  of  positively  revolting  dullness.  The  blank 
spaces  of  this  grim  volume  are  Ht  up  by  Macaulay's 
comments,  sparkling  with  vitality  and  fire,  but  some- 
times softened  and  awed  into  a  strain  of  touching 
beauty.  The  Timaeus,  the  Parmenides,  and  others  of 
the  more  abstruse  dialogues,  appear  to  have  interested 


^Macaulay  read  Latin  authors  in  the  Bipontine  edition  of  1781,  and 
Greek  authors  in  Dindorf's  collection.  His  books  contained  nothing 
except  the  text;  for,  on  whatever  language  he  was  engaged,  whether  ancient ' 
or  modem,  he  had  a  profound  aversion  to  explanatory  notes.  I  cannot 
tell  how  much  use  he  had  macfe  of  a  Lexicon.  At  that  period  of  his  life 
when  he  read  with  me  the  Plutus  of  Aristophanes,  the  Midias  of  Demos- 
thenes, and  the  Gorgias  of  Plato,  he  knew  the  meaning  of  every  word. 


56       THE  MARGINAL   NOTES   OF 

him  little;  for,  greatly  as  he  loved  Plato,  it  was  not 
chiefly  for  the  sake  of  Plato's  metaphysics.  But  at 
any  pitched  battle  between  Socrates,  and  a  tough  op- 
ponent, Macaulay  assisted  in  a  spirit  of  joyous  exhil- 
aration which  people  seldom  bring  to  the  perusal  of  a 
philosophical  treatise.  The  Euthydemus,  in  particu- 
lar, is  enlivened  throughout  by  his  exclamations  of 
amusement  and  delight.  "It  seems  incredible  that 
these  absurdities  of  Dionysodorus  and  Euthydemus 
should  have  been  mistaken  for  wisdom,  even  by  the 
weakest  of  mankind.  I  can  hardly  help  thinking  that 
Plato  has  overcharged  the  portrait.  But  the  humour 
of  the  dialogue  is  admirable."  "Glorious  irony!" 
"Incomparably  ludicrous!"  "No  writer,  not  even 
Cervantes,  was  so  great  a  master  of  this  solemn  ridi- 
cule as  Plato."  "There  is  hardly  any  comedy,  in  any 
language,  more  diverting  than  this  dialogue.  It  is 
not  only  richly  homourous.  The  characters  are  most 
happily  sustained  and  discriminated.  The  contrast 
between  the  youthful  petulance  of  Ctesippus,  and  the 
sly,  sarcastic  mock  humility  of  Socrates  is  admirable." 
There  are  personal  touches  among  the  annotations  on 
the  Euthydemus.  To  Plato's  rather  grudging  de- 
scription of  the  man  of  the  world,  who  is  likewise  a 
man  of  the  study,  and  who  divides  his  time  between 


LORD   MACAULAY  ^j 

philosophy  and  politics,  Macaulay  appends  the  re- 
mark: "Dulcissima  hercle,  eademque  nobilissima 
vita."  And,  below  the  last  line  of  the  dialogue,  there 
occurs  the  following  entry:  "Calcutta,  May  1835. 
Yesterday  the  London  News  of  the  2nd  of  March 
arrived  by  steamer  from  Bombay.     Peel  beaten  in 

two  divisions.     Suave  mari  magno " 

Macaulay  read  the  Republic  with  the  eyes  of  a 
Whig  and  an  EngHshman;  but,  whatever  he  might 
think  of  Plato's  political  and  social  ideals,  he  had  a 
deep  and  abiding  admiration  for  Plato  himself. 
"Plato,"  Macaulay  wrote,  "has  been  censured  with 
great  justice  for  his  doctrine  about  the  community  of 
women  and  the  exposure  of  children.  But  nobody, 
as  far  as  I  remember,  has  done  justice  to  him  on  one 
important  point.  No  ancient  politician  appears  to 
have  thought  so  highly  of  the  capacity  of  women,  and 
to  have  been  inclined  to  make  them  so  important.  He 
was  to  blame  for  wishing  to  divest  them  of  all  their 
characteristic  attractions;  but,  in  return,  he  proposed 
to  admit  them  to  a  full  participation  in  the  power  and 
honour  enjoyed  by  men."  When  the  philosopher 
enjoins  the  inhabitants  of  his  Utopia  to  treat  a  great 
poet  with  profound  reverence,  but  to  get  him  outside 
their  community  at  all  hazards, — to  anoint  his  head 


58       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

with  precious  unguents,  and  crown  him  with  garlands, 
and  then  pass  him  on  as  soon  as  possible  to  some 
neighbouring  city, — Macaulay  remarks:  "You  may 
see  that  Plato  was  passionately  fond  of  poetry,  even 
when  arguing  against  it."  Where  Plato  recommends 
a  broader  patriotism  as  a  corrective  to  the  fierce  and 
narrow  municipal  sentiment  of  the  small  Greek  states, 
"this  passage,"  he  writes,  "does  Plato  great  honour. 
Philhellenism  is  a  step  towards  philanthropy.  There 
is  an  enlargement  of  mind  in  this  work  which  I  do  not 
remember  to  have  found  in  any  earlier  composition, 
and  in  very  few  ancient  works,  either  earlier  or  later." 
There  was,  (said  Macaulay,)  something  far  beyond 
the  ordinary  political  philosophy  of  Greece  in  that 
fine  definition  of  the  object  for  which  civil  government 
should  exist, — "the  relief  and  respite  of  mankind 
from  misfortune."  Of  the  striking  conception  of  ab- 
stract justice,  in  the  Seco^.d  Book  of  the  Repubhc,  he 
writes:  "This  is  indeed  a  noble  dream.  Pity  that  it 
should  come  through  the  gate  of  ivory!"  The  Eighth 
Book,  in  the  judgment  of  the  great  critic,  was  above 
and  beyond  all  detailed  criticism.  "I  remember,"  he 
says,  "nothing  in  Greek  philosophy  superior  to  this 
in  profundity,  ingenuity,  and  eloquence." 

Macaulay  rated  the  Protagoras  exceedingly  high 


LORD  MACAULAY  59 

as  a  work  of  literary  art.  "A  very  lively  picture,"  he 
wrote,  "of  Athenian  manners.  There  is  scarcely  any- 
where so  interesting  a  view  of  the  interior  of  a  Greek 
house  in  the  most  interesting  age  of  Greece."*  "Cal- 
lias  seems  to  have  been  a  munificent  and  courteous 
patron  of  learning.  What  with  sophists,  what  with 
pretty  women,  and  what  with  sycophants,  he  came  to 
the  end  of  a  noble  fortune."  "Alcibiades  is  very  well 
represented  here.  It  is  plain  that  he  wants  only  to 
get  up  a  row  among  the  sophists."  "Protagoras 
seems  to  deserve  the  character  he  gives  himself.  Noth- 
ing can  be  more  courteous  and  generous  than  his 
language.  Socrates  shows  abundance  of  talent  and 
acuteness  in  this  dialogue;  but  the  more  I  read  of  his 
conversation,  the  less  I  wonder  at  the  fierce  hatred 
he  provoked.  He  evidently  had  an  ill-natured  pleas- 
ure in  making  men, — particularly  men  famed  for 
wisdom  and  eloquence, — look  like  fools;  and  it  would 
not  be  difficult,  even  for  a  person  of  far  inferior  powers 
to  his,  to  draw  the  ablest  speculator  into  contradic- 
tions upon  questions  as  subtle  as  those  which  he  loved 
to  investigate.  Protagoras  seems  to  have  been  a  man 
of  great  eloquence  and  accomplishments,  though  no 

^  When  the  porter  slammed  the  door  in  the  face  of  Socrates,  with  the 
observation  that  his  master  was  busy,  "A  more  sincere,  and  a  less  civil, 
answer,"  said  Macaulay,  "than  our  'Not  at  home.'" 


6o       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES   OF 

match  for  Socrates  at  Socrates's  own  weapons.  It  is 
plain  from  many  passages  that  this  dialogue,  if  it  be 
not  altogether  a  fiction,  took  place  about  thirty  years 
before  the  death  of  Socrates.  Pericles  seems  to  have 
been  still  living.  Alcibiades  was  hardly  arrived  at 
manhood.  I  should  think,  from  one  or  two  expres- 
sions, that  the  Peloponnesian  war  had  not  yet  begun. 
I  can  hardly  suppose  this,  and  the  other  dialogues  in 
which  Socrates  is  introduced,  to  be  purely  fictitious. 
Some  such  conversation  took  place,  I  imagine.  Soc- 
rates had  often  related  in  Plato's  hearing  what  had 
passed;  and  this  most  beautiful  drama,  for  such  it  is, 
was  formed  out  of  those  materials." 

At  the  commencement  of  the  Gorgias  is  written: 
"This  was  my  favourite  dialogue  at  College.  I  do 
not  know  whether  I  shall  like  it  as  well  now.  May 
I,  1837."  Macaulay  followed  the  cut-and-thrust  of 
the  controversy  with  brisk  attention.  "Polus  is  much 
in  the  right.  Socrates  abused  scandalously  the  ad- 
vantages which  his  wonderful  talents,  and  his  com- 
mand of  temper,  gave  him."  "You  have  made  a 
blunder,  and  Socrates  will  have  you  in  an  instant." 
"Hem I  Retiarium  astutumi"  "There  you  are  in  the 
Sophist's  net.  I  think  that,  if  I  had  been  in  the  place 
of  Polus,  Socrates  would  hardly  have  had  so  easy  a 


LORD  MACAULAY  6i 

job  of  it."  "WTien  Callicles,  the  unscrupulous  and 
dexterous  votary  of  politics  and  pleasure,  took  up  the 
foil,  the  exchanges  came  quick  and  sharp.  "What  a 
command  of  his  temper  the  old  fellow  had,  and  what 

*»  -■=" — "   ■     ~     '         "  ■■'■'  •'■■•   "     •    '  '•■■"  •■——"•—■■"I    ■  ,.—,-_. 

terrible,  though  delicate,  ridicule!  A  bitter  fellow 
too,  with  all  his  suavity."  "This  is  not  pure  moraHty; 
but  there  is  a  good  deal  of  weight  in  what  Callicles 
says.  He  is  wrong  in  not  perceiving  that  the  real 
happiness,  not  only  of  the  weak  many,  but  of  the  able 
few,  is  promoted  by  virtue.  The  character  of  Callicles 
throws  great  light  on  that  fine  diagnostic  of  Thucydides 
on  the  state  of  political  morality  in  Greece  during  the 
contest  between  the  oligarchical  and  democratic  prin- 
ciples. When  I  read  this  dialogue  as  a  lad  at  college, 
I  thought  Callicles  the  most  wicked  wretch  that  ever 
lived;  and  when,  about  the  time  of  my  leaving  college, 
I  wrote  a  trifling  piece  for  Knight's  Magazine,  in  which 
some  Athenian  characters  were  introduced,  I  made 
this  Callicles  the  villain  of  the  drama. ^  I  now  see 
that  he  was  merely  a  fair  specimen  of  the  public  men' 
of  Athens  in  that  age.  Although  his  principles  werej 
those  of  aspiring  and  voluptuous  men  in  unquiet! 
times,  his  feelings  seem  to  have  been  friendly  and) 

^Scenes  from  "The  Athenian  Revels,"  January  1824.  The  little  drama, 
together  with  its  sister  piece,  "The  Fragments  of  a  Roman  Tale,"  may  bt 
found  in  the  Miscellaneous  Writings, 


^ 


62       THE   MARGINAL   NOTES   OF 

kind."  His  warning  to  Socrates,  (added  Macaulay,) 
about  the  perils  which,  in  a  city  like  Athens,  beset  a 
man  who  neglected  politics,  and  devoted  himself  ex- 
clusively to  philosophical  speculation,  was  well  meant, 
and,  as  the  event  proved,  only  too  well  founded. 

Macaulay  unreservedly  admired  the  glorious  rhap- 
sody which  ends  the  dialogue.  "This,"  he  wrote,  "is 
one  of  the  finest  passages  in  Greek  literature.  Plato 
is  a  real  poet."  "These  doctrines  of  yours,"  (said 
Socrates  to  Gorgias  and  Callicles,)  "have  now  been 
examined  and  found  wanting;  and  this  doctrine  alone 
has  stood  the  test, — that  we  ought  to  be  more  afraid 
of  wronging  than  of  being  wronged,  and  that  the  prime 
business  of  every  man  is,  not  to  seem  good,  but  to  be 
good,  in  all  his  private  and  public  deaHngs."  That 
sentence  was  marked  by  Macaulay  with  three  pencil- 
lines  of  assent  and  admiration.  "This  just  and  noble 
conclusion,"  he  writes,  "atones  for  much  fallacy  in 
the  reasoning  by  which  Socrates  arrived  at  it.  The 
Gorgias  is  certainly  a  very  fine  work.  It  is  deformed 
by  a  prodigious  quantity  of  sophistry.  But  the  char- 
acters are  so  happily  supported,  the  conversations  so 
animated  and  natural,  the  close  so  eloquent,  and  the 
doctrines  inculcated,  though  over-strained,  are  so 
lofty  and  pure,  that  it  is  impossible  not  to  consider  it 


LORD  MACAULAY  63 

as  one  of  the  greatest  performances  whicn  have  de- 
scended to  us  from  that  wonderful  generation." 

When  Socrates  was  put  upon  his  trial,  he  reminded 
the  Court,  in  the  course  of  his  celebrated  defence,  how 
he  had  braved  the  popular  fury  by  refusing  to  concur 
in  the  judicial  murder  of  the  Ten  Generals;  and  how, 
at  the  peril  of  his  life,  he  had  silently  disobeyed  the 
unjust  behests  of  the  Thirty  Tyrants.  Macaulay 
pronounced  that  portion  of  the  speech  to  be  as  inter- 
esting and  striking  a  passage  as  he  ever  heard  or  read. 
When  Socrates  expressed  a  serene  conviction  that  to 
die  was  gain,  even  if  death  were  nothing  more  than  an 
untroubled  and  dreamless  sleep,  "Milton,"  said  Ma- 
caulay, "thought  otherwise. 

'Sad  cure!    For  who  would  lose 
Though  full  of  pain,  this  intellectual  being; 
These  thoughts  that  wander  through  eternity?' 

I  once  thought  with  Milton;  but  every  day  brings  me 
nearer  and  nearer  to  the  doctrine  here  laid  down  by 
Socrates."  "And  now,"  said  the  condemned  crim- 
inal to  his  judges,  "the  time  has  come  when  we  must 
part,  and  go  our  respective  ways, — I  to  die,  you  to 
live;  and  which  of  us  has  the  happier  fortune  in  store 
for  him  is  known  to  none,  except  to  God."     "A  most 


64       THE  MARGINAL  NOTES  OF 

solemn  and  noble  close!"  said  Macaulay.  "Nothing 
was  ever  written,  or  spoken,  approaching  in  sober 
sublimity  to  the  latter  part  of  the  Apology.  It  is  im- 
possible to  read  it  \vithout  feeling  one's  mind  elevated 
and  strengthened." 

Phaedo  relates  how  Socrates,  on  the  last  morning 
of  his  life,  amused  himself  by  recalling  his  own  youth- 
ful interest  in  the  problems  of  natural  science.  "This," 
said  Macaulay,  "is  what  Aristophanes  charged  Soc- 
rates with,  and  what  Xenophon  most  stoutly  denied. 
The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  mind  of  that  wonderful 
man,  as  he  grew  older,  gradually  turned  itself  away 
from  physical  speculations,  and  addicted  itself  more 
and  more  to  moral  philosophy.  Aristophanes  knew 
this  probably  before  Xenophon  was  born."  Macaulay 
thus  remarks  on  the  beautiful  legend  about  the  puri- 
fication of  souls  in  Acheron  and  Cocytus,  with  which 
Socrates  concluded  his  final  talk  on  earth:  "All  this 
is  merely  a  fine  poem,  Hke  Dante's.  Milton  has  bor- 
rowed largely  from  it;  and,  considered  as  an  effort  of 
the  imagination,  it  is  one  from  which  no  poet  need  be 
ashamed  to  borrow."  When  the  master  drank  the 
poison,  and  when  Apollodorus  burst  into  a  passion  of 
weeping,  and  broke  down  in  a  moment  the  composure 
of  the  whole  company  of  disciples,   Macaulay  says. 


LORD  MACAULAY  65 

"This  is  the  passage,  I  dare  say,  which  Cicero  could 
never  read  without  tears.  I  never  could.  Phaedo 
tells  a  noble  and  most  touching  story.  Addison 
meant  to  have  written  a  tragedy  on  it.  He  would  in- 
fallibly have  spoiled  it.  The  reasonings  of  Socrates, 
on  his  last  day,  convey  no  satisfaction  to  my  mind ;  but 
the  example  of  benevolence,  patience,  and  self-pos- 
session, which  he  exhibited,  is  incomparable  and  in- 
estimable." And  again,  on  the  last  page  of  the  Crito,  , 
he  writes:  "There  is  much  that  may  be  questioned  in 
the  reasoning  of  Socrates;  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  j 
admire  the  wisdom  and  \irtue  which  it  indicates. 
When  we  consider  the  moral  state  of  Greece  in  his 
time,  and  the  revolution  which  he  produced  in  men's 
notions  of  good  and  evil,  we  must  pronounce  him  one 
of  the  greatest  men  that  ever  lived." 


THE  END 


WORKS 

BY  THE 


RT.  HON.  SIR  GEORGE  OTTO  TREYELYAN,  babt. 

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